This poem, "Miss Congeniality," you know,
there's always someone in the yearbook who's miss this,
and miss that, and I thought it was a particularly sad fate
to be Miss Congeniality.
You've had to make a lot of compromises to be that person.
So this is called "Miss Congeniality."
"Even as an embryo, she made room for the other guy.
Slick and bloody, she emerged quietly.
Why spoil the doctor's best moment?
When dad ran over her tricycle, she smiled.
When mom drowned her kitten, she curtsied, a Swiss statuette.
Her teachers like the way she sat at her desk composed
as yesterday's news.
In high school, she decorated her locker
with heart shaped doilies, and only went so far,
a cartoon kiss at the door.
She read the classics, The Glamorous Dolly Madison,
and dreamed of marrying the boy in the choir whose voice never
changed.
Wedding photos reveal a waterfall
where her face should be.
Her husband admired how she bound her feet
to buff the linoleum.
When she got old, she remembered to say pardon to the children
she no longer recognized, smiling sons and daughters who
sat at her bedside, watching her fade to a wink."
So that's her fate.
If any of you are Miss Congeniality, I'm sorry,
don't take it personally.