Sleeping Quarters
        Jacob Riis, 1890

collapsed the alley's filthy trinity
of boys wilt by a barrel like a hearth
to try and sleep away fixed grimaces
their knees split through tattered trouser legs
their bony shins tattooed with coal like shifts
they pray will never come I pray such whimpering
stays dead beatified in rags beyond
the slaps of miners crouched whose jaundiced eyes
said dig until the country of your pain
makes your bodies men observe how Riis
has left an empty chair in frame to say
they've learned to trust this bed of broken bricks
and hark the youngest one his form outstretched
each night a Christ of soot too lost to die

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from Gargoyle
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