About Face poem – Alice Fulton

Because life’s too short to blush,

I keep my blood tucked in.

I won’t be mortified

by what I drive or the flaccid

vivacity of my last dinner party.

I take my cue from statues posing only

in their shoulder pads of snow: all January

you can see them working on their granite tans.

That I woke at an ungainly hour,

stripped of the merchandise that clothed me,

distilled to pure suchness,

means not enough to anyone for me

to confess. I do not suffer

from the excess of taste

that spells embarrassment:

mothers who find their kids unseemly

in their condom earrings,

girls cringing to think

they could be frumpish as their mothers.

Though the late nonerotic Elvis

in his studded gut of jumpsuit

made everybody squeamish, I admit.

Rule one: the King must not elicit pity.

Was the audience afraid of being tainted

–this might rub off on me–

or were they–surrendering–

what a femme word–feeling

solicitous–glimpsing their fragility

in his reversible purples

and unwholesome goldish chains?

At least embarrassment is not an imitation.

It’s intimacy for beginners,

the orgasm no one cares to fake.

I almost admire it. I almost wrote despise.

Copyright ©: 
Alice Fulton

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Poems in English 

• Golden Eyes by Adela Florence Nicolson
• From Behind The Lattice by Adela Florence Nicolson
• Feroza by Adela Florence Nicolson
• Feroke by Adela Florence Nicolson
• Fate Knows No Tears by Adela Florence Nicolson
• Farewell by Adela Florence Nicolson
• Fancy by Adela Florence Nicolson
• Famine Song by Adela Florence Nicolson
• Early Love by Adela Florence Nicolson
• Disappointment by Adela Florence Nicolson
• Deserted Gipsys Song Hillside Camp by Adela Florence Nicolson
• Dedication by Adela Florence Nicolson
• Dedication To Malcolm Nicolson by Adela Florence Nicolson
• Camp Followers Song Gomal River by Adela Florence Nicolson
• Back To The Border by Adela Florence Nicolson
• Au Salon by Adela Florence Nicolson
• Atavism by Adela Florence Nicolson
• Ashore by Adela Florence Nicolson
• Among The Sandhills by Adela Florence Nicolson
• Among The Rice Fields by Adela Florence Nicolson

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