Four states have conjugal visits
Michigan is not one of them

In fantasies about your first night home
We imagine ourselves on a wood floor

Your body unfit for a mattress
My body accustomed to coming up against a hard edge

Give me a thick reason to curse away
Your clothes, you wrote in a letter

Crayon drawing rejected
For UNIDENTIFIABLE MATERIAL RESIDUE

An officer searches photos
For nipples or genitals

An officer searches your body like an envelope
Before we meet again in the room of infinite goodbyes 

We pour food from the vending machine
Onto paper plates

It is easier to spot contraband
Displayed against a white background

Note: Final stanza is after Zora Neale Hurston

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.