Paul Hostovsky

SMILE

I don’t speak your language
and you don’t speak mine–
but there is this smile,
the one that means I wish
I knew your language,
this shy, innocent, ignorant,
helpless smile that says
This is all I know how to say
in your language,
this smile I imagine
someone among the first
explorers might have smiled
at someone among the first
Indigenous people they encountered—
just might have–
before all the violence began.
This smile that somehow survived
all the violence,
and all the ignorance,
and all the unspeakable crimes,
and blossoms here on my face now,
and on your face.


Paul's YouTube video reading of "Smile":


Paul confesses: "My roofer hired men who did not speak English. They were brown, of indeterminate ethnicity–Arab, Mexican, Guatemalan, Marshallese? It was hot. I brought them water. I could only smile at them. They smiled back. I never feel so white as when I’m smiling at a person of color. Thence the poem."

PAUL HOSTOVSKY's poems have won Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, the FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, and have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Best American Poetry, and The Writer's Almanac. Website: paulhostovsky.com