As Girl
At six being a girl meant Tinkerbell
nail polish and pointed, pink Barbie shoes.
Sequined fairy wands and slippers that fell
off my feet when I ran. Outside the blue
sky a backdrop for green grass, the sweet
gum tree that was home base. Everything caught
my eye and sparkled. Rain-freshened earthworms,
armored rollie-pollies, and firefly dots.
At night the television played the news.
Its cyclopean eye returned my stare.
The goat-like pupil reflected a parade
of women and girls like ewes. Fair
and lovely. I thought they were adored.
Later, I was not a girl anymore.1
1. Stardate 2373, Earthdate 12.25.2021: I watch the crew stand on deck and chart a course around
the asteroid. I want Roddenberrian optimism, but I worry that one of us misunderstands a
time-paradox. I worry one of us misunderstands humanoids.
The rerun ends and another documentary begins. Onscreen
a model James Webb unfolds its mirrors
like petals
Copyright © 2024 by Annie Wenstrup. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 21, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.
“‘As Girl’ is part of a sequence that imagines Ggugguyni (the Dena’ina [white] raven) as an archivist who curates events from pop culture, the natural world, and personal histories. The timelines in the poems redirect the speakers’ gazes and complicate their movement through time and space. For this poem, the frameworks of childhood and science imagine time as a linear entity, facing backwards or forwards. In contrast, science fiction permits a recursive movement that challenges the sense of inevitability inherent in linear time. I’m interested in examining how different chronotopes destabilize or reinforce colonial constructions of time and space.”
—Annie Wenstrup
Annie Wenstrup
Annie Wenstrup is Dena’ina poet and the author of The Museum of Unnatural Histories (Wesleyan University Press, 2025). Awarded the tenth annual New England Review Award for Emerging Writers and the Alaska Literary Award in 2023, Wenstrup is an inaugural Indigenous Nations Poets Fellow. She lives on the traditional territories of the lower Tanana Dene Peoples in Fairbanks, Alaska.