In a pub of pensioned men
and stale décor,
two newly women enter:
one fires her smile.

She's young and tough,
and her hair says she's trying too hard,
and she's occupying clothes
that leave so much caress undressed:
she's raw, her own self-portrait.

But that glance was mercantile:
I was about to buy a drink.
Yet the smile was welcome,
like the scent of shocked basil
on a humid summer day.

This poem will be published in Borderlines 33.