Underwater Indestructible Ultra Woman

Does medication make you tired does lack of sleep make you tired does gluten make you
tired does looking for an answer make you tired.

Does catching up after being late make you tired does planning ahead make you tired.

How much did you manage clean finesse prepare produce comfort calm and care. How
much for yourself. How much of you is beast how much machine, wired hard for
working out and working off. How much is tender heart how much a tender part,
a part tendered like a product on a shelf admired for its aims.

Are you doing doing done.

How much will you make of what is being made. How much can you manage, no
how much can you truly manage beyond a three-foot range.

Can you manage up to ten feet. Twenty. Can you manage underwater, on a plane.

Have you ever started leaking, have you ever had a witness to your leaking, can you
plaster up your cracks, can you do it in the dark.

It’s time, it’s time for what it’s time for, to move to move, which way to move until
it’s time to turn again, turn on turn over, turn around into the next best thing.

After Reading Please Shred: An Invocation

please repurpose, please keep, please plaster, please enshrine, please make a paper ocean
for a fleet of boats
a lining for a box turtle, a cote for field mice in winter, a fort for foxes, pile of kindling,
craft of scraps,
please test paint, please create your next masterpiece in the
form of a papier mâché pinecone.

A tree died for this, a night out died for this, a toddler had to put himself to sleep for this.

This has been most of my life, almost half my life, the searching part, the scared part,
the arrogant part, the avoidant part, the part that stayed in the stadium
to collect all the ash raining down from the fireworks display.

Please pray, please play, please splay your mess
before me, you honor me with imperfection,
recollection, letting down of hair and guard.

I’m asking where I am most myself, what stage do I star on without even acting. Where do I not
open the door, no door to open, nothing to set free, there is no cage.

Emily Pérez is the author of What Flies Want, winner of the Iowa Prize and a finalist for a Colorado Book Award; House of Sugar, House of Stone; and two chapbooks. She co-edited the anthology The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood, also a finalist for a Colorado Book Award. A CantoMundo fellow and Ledbury Critic, she’s received support from Hedgebrook, Bread Loaf, The Community of Writers, and others. She teaches high school in Denver, where she lives with her family.