Notes on Smiling

The variations are manifold

Smiles on the face of humanity

Forced, loving, thrilled, stupid, toothless and shy

And while they all spring from the same humor pool

Each hangs like a knot on the invisible thread of glowing wire

That weaves our species’ quirky abilities

The girl smiles

She is not a woman, adolescent, pre-teen pubescent or toddler

She is a girl

And if you don’t like the word girl, because it doesn’t suit your visions of equality

Take it up with me later over a squeeze bottle of I Can’t Believe it’s not Vaginalotramin

The foreman smiles

The cancer ward janitor smiles

The accountant, though not as often

Billy the Kid had one too

Indira smiled

Ma Barker

Josephine

Ben Franklin smiled in a fat-jowl’d provincial smirk

He was (among other things) a printer’s apprentice, self-publisher, and a slick son of a bitch

Waddling around Philadelphia

Whore’d out

Helping to form a new society for the hell of it

Or maybe out of convenience

I smile a lot in my lie of work

Out my ass with a match