My mother’s tooth broke in her mouth
split right in two
from the root

Look at how the sickness
grows big and green and strong
like wild Spanish thyme
how it shatters the foundation

Her tooth broke, in the
same way
my mother’s tongue had to
so she could speak the bastard
cousin of her native dialect,
her native patois
which had been                      c sectioned out of her mouth
leaving scar tissue and
organs                         reorganized

My mother’s broken tooth
was a testament to the way poverty takes
everything
And then asks for your body
when rent is due
Poverty and America, passing as
identical twins

My mother’s tooth broke, and
she spit out the shrapnel that almost cracked the others
This almost destruction-
the way violence takes up three times as much room as peace in a punnett square 

My mother’s tooth sits in her hands and she
tells us that my family just has weak teeth
every woman does
And there is no reason, and no root canal that can fix it
just a mouth full of rot that
comes from never opening your mouth
until it’s too late

Shy Parris is a 26 year old genderfluid, Queer afrolatinx Bronxite, a borderland, a bridge. Shy is in love with the world, so everything they write is a love poem. They are a composite of the dreams of everyone who helped raise them and everything that ever broke their heart. You can find them somewhere in New York baring their soul on a microphone at a poetry bar or cafe. You can find some of their earlier work on Instagram @the_shy_poet_

Rachel Harrison was born in 1966; she is based in New York. She received a BA in fine art from Wesleyan University in 1989. Harrison has exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; Whitney Biennial and the Whitney Museum of American Art; and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum among others