“You forget I can regrow my fangs, charmer”
A review of O My Charmer by Katherine Gekker
The vagaries of love—romantic, sexual, or platonic—are an eternal theme for poetry, but Katherine Gekker manages to bring fresh observations to the subject in her second collection, O My Charmer. By turns witty and angry, contented and fearful, the poems in this book are compelling as they chart various phases of a sometimes turbulent relationship.
Katherine Gekker is a long time member of the DMV literary community. Unusually for a poet, she has also been a successful businesswoman, having founded and run a printing company in Northern Virginia for 31 years before selling it in 2005. It’s good to have new work from this fine poet.
The title poem illustrates the turbulent side of the relationship depicted in the book.
You sewed my mouth as good as shut.
Defanged & starved me. Milked my venom
sacs dry….
Before you snared me, tortured me,
didn’t you see me extend my full
12 feet beside a pond?...
Your basket can’t contain me.
I uncoil. My hood flares.
You forget I can regrow my fangs, charmer.
(“O My Charmer, Spare Me”)
The opening poem, “Punctuation: Missing & Present,” brilliantly encapsulates the highs and lows, joys and pain of love, using punctuation as a metaphor for the joinings and separations inherent in a long-term relationship.
I believe
in the Oxford comma,
separating toast, peanut butter, and jelly—
in the semi-colon—that justice of the peace
who married two independent equals (you & me)
in the colon: because it separates items on a list
& hours from minutes from seconds
& you : me….
But fear…
—questions without question marks—
Can I tell you something you may not want to hear
The poem is unfortunately too long to quote in full, but it’s a good example of this poet’s wit—humor with a sharp bite.
This romance began in “Abandon”:
Throughout that long lonely decade, wasn’t I a fraying cord,
shorting out every electric outlet, burn marks charring each wall?
Didn’t I yearn for someone to discover I’m here, here—....
And then, capsizing in the Potomac in that sudden storm,
your hand on my hip, my hands on your breasts, waves cresting us.
Squirrels hurled acorns, percussive, against our attic roof.
Were we always awake?
For a time, didn’t we join them in their wild abandon—
Even here, the ecstasy of new love carries an undercurrent of apprehension.
This poem also provides a demonstration of Gekker’s skillful crafting: the long lines, cascading indents, and creative use of punctuation.
“Safeway Parking Lot at Night” dramatizes the ongoing fear of loss or infidelity when a relationship is not fully grounded in trust:
Grocery shopping you said.
But that was 3 hours ago.
Where are you?
Did something happen to you?
Our dog searches the house, limps through the yard. Misses you….
Don’t you remember how we came together—
fusions in a nuclear accelerator.
Now that our old dog sleeps almost all the time.
How could you leave?
Subsequent poems chart the diminishment and eventual dissolution. But the book ends on a note of, if not happiness, at least some acceptance, and offers a prayer to the goddess of love for relief and protection from the arrows of passion.
Indecent, this watchful telescope,
tracking an apparition, a speck’s transit
across the arsonous sun—
Venus, minuscule doyenne….
O celestial Venus, release me.
Free me from my calculations. The spell
of that duenna guarding my heart.
Make yourself my amulet.
These poems were enjoyable to read on first picking up the book. However, as I read and reread and thought about what to say, I found them deepening and growing more compelling. They do not give up all their secrets on a first glance. O My Charmer is one of those rare collections that rewards multiple readings and deep contemplation.
Katherine Gekker is the author of O My Charmer (Dancing Girl Press) and In Search of Warm Breathing Things (Glass Lyre Press). Her poems have appeared in multiple journals and anthologies, including The Hopkins Review (forthcoming), Presence , Calyx, and Rappahannock Review. Gekker’s poems, collectively called “…to Cast a Shadow Again,” have been set to music by composer Eric Ewazen. Composer Carson Cooman has set a seasonal cycle of her poems, “Chasing the Moon Down,” to music. She served as Poetry Assistant Editor for Delmarva Review.
Gekker was born in Washington, DC. She lives in Arlington, Virginia, with her wife.
Gregory Luce is the co-founder and poetry editor of Washington Unbound. He has published six chapbooks. He lives in Arlington, serves as Poetry Editor of The Mid-Atlantic Review and writes a monthly column for the online arts journal Scene4.