Charm


Is it possible to charm
the spouse who’s heard you
fart in bed? The child
you’ve screamed at?
Isn’t charm only a long white glove
removed, fingers extended,
charmed, I’m sure
kind of thing?

And didn’t Jeffrey Dahmer
have it, and Ted Bundy?

And then there was
one of my college boyfriends,
the slick dancer
from a lovely New England
home—back in the double-standard
’60s—who almost charmed the pants
off my prim mother, and, 
I learned later, had been engaged
in the gang-rape of a townie girl.

It’s enough to make you put on
tiger skins and seek the desert.

Yet, sometimes I cannot feel
my face until I put on
my smiling social interaction mask.
Alone, in my blue room,
stewing in my own
juices, I begin to 
dissolve, then evaporate. 
I need the press of others
to make me condense, 
though my attempt
at charm, fashioned 
to interface, can feel like
an invader surrounded
by leukocytes—utterly
resisted. 
​
Still, talking on the phone
this morning, asking a favor 
of a friend, I felt my cheeks
chunk up with good will,
and my internal organs
all peacefully nestle. 
This afternoon, even my dog
put on the dog of good behavior— 
heeling properly, as if
trained—when my tiny grandson
held her leash for her walk.
And as I apply my lip gloss
and blush this evening 
before going out, I bizarrely smile
at myself, trying to disarm
my deep doubt—charmer
and charmed at once.

Bless us all—social beasts
that we are. We dish up
smiles, we laugh in self-deprecation
as we flick cookie-crumbs 
from our lips, we try to lift
our blue-footed booby feet
in sync with a potential mate’s,
to lubricate the wheels
of social traffic with our luscious
dimples—as if we could soften
the world and shape it 
to our needs—our moon faces beaming
on our compatriots, dark sides 
sweetly hidden.