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
A few random poems:
- Омар Хайям – Мир любви обрести без терзаний нельзя
- Untitled I by Yunus Emre
- Alciphron and Leucippe by Walter Savage Landor
- Олег Бундур – Всё живёт
- Oblivion by Satish Verma
- Нина Воронель – Суета
- The Walk by Noel Angelo Hurley
- discovery.html
- Curse of Righteousness by Vaishnavi Prakash
- Rita And The Rifle by Mahmoud Darwish
- Robert Burns: Whistle O’er The Lave O’t:
- Infelice by Stevie Smith
- Virginibus Puerisque
- Little angel by Vladimir Marku
- Infanta Marina by Wallace Stevens
External links
Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus
Talking Writing Monster’s Page –
Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all fresh
Poems in English
- Traveling Dream by Marge Piercy
- Toad Dreams by Marge Piercy
- To the Pay Toilet by Marge Piercy
- To Be of Use by Marge Piercy
- To a Steam Roller by Marianne Moore
- To an Intra-mural Rat by Marianne Moore
- The Woman in the Ordinary by Marge Piercy
- The Steeple-Jack by Marianne Moore
- The Seven Of Pentacles by Marge Piercy
- The Past is the Present by Marianne Moore
- The Paper Nautilus by Marianne Moore
- The Pangolin by Marianne Moore
- The Neighbor by Marge Piercy
- The Morning Half-Life Blues by Marge Piercy
- The Moment I knew my Life had Changed by Maria Mazziotti Gillan
- The Friend by Marge Piercy
- The Fish by Marianne Moore
- The Dark Cavalier by Margaret Widdemer
- The Colloquy Beneath by Margaret Marie Hubbard
- The Cat’s Song by Marge Piercy
More external links (open in a new tab):
Doska or the Board – write anything
Search engines:
Yandex – the best search engine for searches in Russian (and the best overall image search engine, in any language, anywhere)
Qwant – the best search engine for searches in French, German as well as Romance and Germanic languages.
Ecosia – a search engine that supposedly… plants trees
Duckduckgo – the real alternative and a search engine that actually works. Without much censorship or partisan politics.
Yahoo– yes, it’s still around, amazingly, miraculously, incredibly, but now it seems to be powered by Bing.
Parallel Translations of Poetry
The Poetry Repository – an online library of poems, poetry, verse and poetic works
