White my first blankets in infancy; white the keys
of my first piano scales; white the lilies after which
a childhood friend is named, whose petals

her seamstress mother embroidered with white thread
on white wedding dresses for brides who’d later bring them
to cleaners to restore to their white glory. White my teeth

and white the car I drive to arrive here. Here,
administration is concerned about white powder
substitutes slipping in via gummed manila seals. 

New policy mandates white-enveloped white-paper
letters, forgets white deviance, too, cloaks in white.
In school when I misspelled a word or held my pen 

too long on paper I corrected with white-out. Now
in letters to him I’ll strike-through or scribble out
the mistake, lament the errant marks on the once-white

page. No white-coated doctors, no white pills, 
no white picket fences, no fresh pulled milk, no fresh-
laid quilt of snow can treat the warping blue 

of drawn-out days. On visits he white-knuckles
the back of my chair, my hand. I tell him to squeeze
until our blood bottlenecks, stalls. Our hands blanch white.

Published January 17th, 2021

Leigh Sugar lives in Brooklyn with her pup Elmo. She holds an MFA from NYU, teaches at CUNY's Institute for Justice and Opportunity, and is pursuing graduate studies in public administration with a focus on criminal justice policy.

Martha Tuttle is an interdisciplinary artist born in Santa Fe, New Mexico, now based in Brooklyn, New York. She earned a BA at Bard College and an MFA in Painting from The Yale School of Art. Tuttle has shown widely in America and abroad, including exhibitions at Tilton Gallery in New York, Rhona Hoffman Gallery in Illinois, Piero Atchugarry Gallery in Florida, Hiram Butler Gallery in Texas, Matthew Brown Los Angeles in California, Galleria Anna Marra in Italy, and Geukens & De Vil in Belgium. Tuttle’s work has been acquired by the University of San Diego in California and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She was an artist-in-residence at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation in Florida, the Montello Foundation in Nevada, Freight + Volume in Massachusetts, and Søndre Green Farm in Norway, among others. Tuttle’s recent solo exhibition, A stone that thinks of Enceladus at Storm King Art Center, can be viewed online.