Envy and Gratitude
Brian asked me
if I had these same breasts
when I was twelve and
I did I tell
him they were
already there I
mimicked for him
the high five
boys used to
give each other
when they had
dared to cup
their hands
reach across
my chest
felt separate
from any being
I told Ada
that was back
when I didn’t
know what
was okay
or not
to ask for
or touch
and she said
she still feels
that way
unsure
and we all
nodded
looking down
at the Poetry Project
floor rug
some walls
never fully
fall down
erupt
or contain us
Ada says
aren’t all
poems just
shifts in
attention
and then
she says
we would
be good people
to know
in a genocide
which is
her way
of saying
I’m glad
I know you now
she keeps
repeating
she has seen
this before
people with signs
in their windows
that say
we stand
with you
until one day
you see your own
mother on the news
being forced to talk
a breaking point
is described as visible
a clear departure
from everything
that came before
I’ve known people too
who lived in the woods
its not the same I say
but they survived on berries
and found their way
into different countries
somehow crossing
the alps
so they could live to tell
their grandchildren
to eat all the food
on their plates
the impossibility
of imagining
wasted food
never departing
the visual mode
of the empty plate
the full plate
too much sometimes
it is and isn’t the same
I ask Matt if being alone
in the coming weeks
will be positive or negative
as if any solitude has ever been clear
and he describes perfectly
the days that will feel destructive
until finally in the middle
of that freedom
he will know what to do
with himself
feel adjusted
my number comes up
and Malka says,
remember it until you die
tell me a story she says
and somehow I come up with a story
to tell the child
entertain her
demonstrate for her
what adults think of
when prompted
it goes like this:
there once was a woman
who lived with a mad scientist
the scientist was always
too busy doing research
to love the woman
or spend any time with her
and so he does not notice
that the woman has
discovered true and
indescribable
magic
forces that turn one object into another
that transform the landscape entirely
until one day he is finally
convinced to pay attention
and walks with the woman
into the woods
where he is promptly
turned into a fork
which the woman will use
to eat with forever after
lots of heaping plates
of spaghetti and meatballs
the end I say
whose turn is it next
another story gets told
a bug just landed
in the crease of my book
and died there
a bookmark
something to hold my place
I’ll be right back
I look up at sugar palace
I’ll be back soon
sugar palace is
where Tennessee is
writing a novel
about lynching
and the precarity of
oppressed bodies
in the south
Tennessee nailed an image
to the wall
and can be seen pacing
before it
alternating between
looking at the image
and writing
now he moves his desk
to the other side
sugar palace is
a place where people
used to make syrup
when I go upstairs
the pages of mourning and militancy
have a moth on them
flipping out
I watch the deranged moth flip
Envy and gratitude
has been opened
the pages with notes
in the margins
are turning
even though
there is no breeze
conversations
in and out of the city
trail behind
which book
that I started will I open
or get to finish
that is a strange place for
a tree stump I think
for a tree to have been removed
I’m looking up at sugar palace again
we are told that
once a play was put on there
and the actors wore lights
strung around their bodies
to be seen performing
in the summer night
to hear about it
everyone is picturing
their own body lit up
a performance taking place
surrounded by sweet things
the smell of sugar in vats
bubbling into syrup
what are the predecessors
of this coated image
the legacy of surprised actions
the way it’s told I picture
the play happening fifty years ago
a hundred
but later I hear it was just last week
I can already picture us
on the trips we talk about taking
coming down from the hike
Ada tells me about
a kind of water that lights up
when you dive into it
phosphorescent Canadian water
and rubs her fingers together
trying to say there aren’t words
for how the water pushes
against the skin
what we are nostalgic for
creates new possibilities
selective futures open up
I thought the fireworks
would fall on me
that I would be too close
to not feel them fall
I can’t pretend
I didn’t just see
a house on an island
caved in
covered in birds
water encroaching
the train making
classic train noises
Sam tells me she is sorry
she has to talk
that maybe each poem
she writes
is part of her rage
at having to say things
that should not need to be said
everything is veiled I tell her
some things are lesser
or more veiled
sometimes there is no core beneath
I describe the election night
where I was
who I saw
the poetry bunker we made
my interactions with strangers on the street
I didn’t understand what was happening
I thought things always change and turn around
while we sleep
so we should all just rest and wait
I took a picture
of Rebekah crying
thinking we would look back on it
and laugh that we had believed
that awful truth to be possible
it’s a great story Sam says
tell me yours I want to know
Sam is in a lamenting mood
she says hers is exactly the same
she saw people
and went places
there was an unusual silence
for so large a crowd
she is sure we will both
retell our stories
many times
where were you that night
what did you think
everyone will have their
own version she says
everyone will have
their own sugar palace too
their own house split open
an image pinned to the wall
their own
way of pacing
living adjacent
or against
if I had these same breasts
when I was twelve and
I did I tell
him they were
already there I
mimicked for him
the high five
boys used to
give each other
when they had
dared to cup
their hands
reach across
my chest
felt separate
from any being
I told Ada
that was back
when I didn’t
know what
was okay
or not
to ask for
or touch
and she said
she still feels
that way
unsure
and we all
nodded
looking down
at the Poetry Project
floor rug
some walls
never fully
fall down
erupt
or contain us
Ada says
aren’t all
poems just
shifts in
attention
and then
she says
we would
be good people
to know
in a genocide
which is
her way
of saying
I’m glad
I know you now
she keeps
repeating
she has seen
this before
people with signs
in their windows
that say
we stand
with you
until one day
you see your own
mother on the news
being forced to talk
a breaking point
is described as visible
a clear departure
from everything
that came before
I’ve known people too
who lived in the woods
its not the same I say
but they survived on berries
and found their way
into different countries
somehow crossing
the alps
so they could live to tell
their grandchildren
to eat all the food
on their plates
the impossibility
of imagining
wasted food
never departing
the visual mode
of the empty plate
the full plate
too much sometimes
it is and isn’t the same
I ask Matt if being alone
in the coming weeks
will be positive or negative
as if any solitude has ever been clear
and he describes perfectly
the days that will feel destructive
until finally in the middle
of that freedom
he will know what to do
with himself
feel adjusted
my number comes up
and Malka says,
remember it until you die
tell me a story she says
and somehow I come up with a story
to tell the child
entertain her
demonstrate for her
what adults think of
when prompted
it goes like this:
there once was a woman
who lived with a mad scientist
the scientist was always
too busy doing research
to love the woman
or spend any time with her
and so he does not notice
that the woman has
discovered true and
indescribable
magic
forces that turn one object into another
that transform the landscape entirely
until one day he is finally
convinced to pay attention
and walks with the woman
into the woods
where he is promptly
turned into a fork
which the woman will use
to eat with forever after
lots of heaping plates
of spaghetti and meatballs
the end I say
whose turn is it next
another story gets told
a bug just landed
in the crease of my book
and died there
a bookmark
something to hold my place
I’ll be right back
I look up at sugar palace
I’ll be back soon
sugar palace is
where Tennessee is
writing a novel
about lynching
and the precarity of
oppressed bodies
in the south
Tennessee nailed an image
to the wall
and can be seen pacing
before it
alternating between
looking at the image
and writing
now he moves his desk
to the other side
sugar palace is
a place where people
used to make syrup
when I go upstairs
the pages of mourning and militancy
have a moth on them
flipping out
I watch the deranged moth flip
Envy and gratitude
has been opened
the pages with notes
in the margins
are turning
even though
there is no breeze
conversations
in and out of the city
trail behind
which book
that I started will I open
or get to finish
that is a strange place for
a tree stump I think
for a tree to have been removed
I’m looking up at sugar palace again
we are told that
once a play was put on there
and the actors wore lights
strung around their bodies
to be seen performing
in the summer night
to hear about it
everyone is picturing
their own body lit up
a performance taking place
surrounded by sweet things
the smell of sugar in vats
bubbling into syrup
what are the predecessors
of this coated image
the legacy of surprised actions
the way it’s told I picture
the play happening fifty years ago
a hundred
but later I hear it was just last week
I can already picture us
on the trips we talk about taking
coming down from the hike
Ada tells me about
a kind of water that lights up
when you dive into it
phosphorescent Canadian water
and rubs her fingers together
trying to say there aren’t words
for how the water pushes
against the skin
what we are nostalgic for
creates new possibilities
selective futures open up
I thought the fireworks
would fall on me
that I would be too close
to not feel them fall
I can’t pretend
I didn’t just see
a house on an island
caved in
covered in birds
water encroaching
the train making
classic train noises
Sam tells me she is sorry
she has to talk
that maybe each poem
she writes
is part of her rage
at having to say things
that should not need to be said
everything is veiled I tell her
some things are lesser
or more veiled
sometimes there is no core beneath
I describe the election night
where I was
who I saw
the poetry bunker we made
my interactions with strangers on the street
I didn’t understand what was happening
I thought things always change and turn around
while we sleep
so we should all just rest and wait
I took a picture
of Rebekah crying
thinking we would look back on it
and laugh that we had believed
that awful truth to be possible
it’s a great story Sam says
tell me yours I want to know
Sam is in a lamenting mood
she says hers is exactly the same
she saw people
and went places
there was an unusual silence
for so large a crowd
she is sure we will both
retell our stories
many times
where were you that night
what did you think
everyone will have their
own version she says
everyone will have
their own sugar palace too
their own house split open
an image pinned to the wall
their own
way of pacing
living adjacent
or against
ANNA GURTON-WACHTER is a writer, editor, and archivist. Her first full length book, Utopia Pipe Dream Memory, is forthcoming from Ugly Duckling Presse in 2019. Chapbooks include Mother of All (Above/Ground Press), The Abundance Chamber Works Alone (Essay Press), Blank Blank Blues (Horse Less Press), and CYRUS (Portable Press @ Yo-Yo Labs). Other work has appeared in 6 x 6, The Organism for Poetic Research's Sci Pulp Poetics and Feminist Temporalities, No Dear, Elderly and elsewhere. Anna edits and makes books with DoubleCross Press, a poetry micro-press publishing handmade letterpress chapbooks. More info about her can be found at annagw.com or on instagram @ anna.as.metaphor because she is as a metaphor is. She lives in Brooklyn, NY a few blocks away from the house in which she was born.
