We’ve Been Here Before by Emily Pérez

Your land of tornado my land of weathervane. 

How many are like me: in public, pressed and pleated. 

How many are like you: an ocean battered tree, roots in shallow sand. 

How many ways will you list, 

                                       how many guy wires will I pull, 

                                                                                        attempt to prop tent poles in place. 

I’ve got too much to mend and too few pins.

I balance you atop my head, the family ferris wheeling. 

I kneel in the smallest corner of the storm, threading the needle’s eye.

Emily Pérez is the author of What Flies Want, winner of the Iowa Prize. She co-edited the anthology The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood, a Colorado Book Award finalist. A CantoMundo fellow and Ledbury Critic, her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best-of-the-Net. She lives in Denver.

21 July 2025