For The Dickey Bird Poem by Dónall Dempsey

George Washington
was famous for

his false wooden
choppers

but before the advent
of porcelain false teeth

dentures were often
made from teeth

pulled from the dead.

The American Civil War
and the piled up corpses from the carnage

yielded an admirable supply

being shipped by the barrel load
to the old country.

Elderly English gents
smiling
with dead men’s teeth

smiling with someone else’s
smile
who couldn’t smile
no more.

History never smiles
on the defeated.