Joy Priest

… a human body would not make it
           to the seafloor intact                            *                     NO LOITERING  
               IN THE WATER                             

live in an alley
at the back of a lawmaker’s mind.A mind with no imaginationfor our reality, they say. With teeth
rowed like cigarettes, factory still,my mothers sweat through a week
of soil on their skin,
unconcerned with grace.One has grace and a gold tooth,
a tiny heart etched in the middle.One knows a key ingredient of beauty
is sorrow.Oven burns cross their wrists.
Fingers calloused from hot plates.