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:
- Владислав Крапивин – Тяжелый толчок и вспышка у глаз
- I Have a Fire for You in my Mouth by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Омар Хайям о Боге и религии: Рубаи, стихи Хайяма про Бога – Poetry Monster
- A Serenade poem – Alexander Pushkin
- Freedom poem – Aminu Ola Rasaq poems | Poems and Poetry
- Владимир Маяковский – В мире два класса… (РОСТА №501)
- A Theory Of Prosody by Philip Levine
- All The Dead Dears by Sylvia Plath
- Федор Тютчев – Как дымный столп светлеет в вышине
- I have fallen into unconsciousness by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Winters!!! by Aditya Kumar
- Humayun To Zobeida (From the Urdu) by Sarojini Naidu
- On a Fan of the Author’s Design poem – Alexander Pope
- Владимир Высоцкий – Охота на кабанов
- Юнна Мориц – Это да, это нет
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
- The Campera, the Foreigner y el Novio by Marjorie Kanter
- The Boy by Marilyn Hacker
- The Aegean by Maria Luisa Spaziani
- The Gate by Marie Howe
- The Copper Beech by Marie Howe
- Synchronicity by Marina Cecilia Kohon
- Subjective Genocide by Marie Starr
- Subject to Change by Marilyn L. Taylor
- Spenser’s Ireland by Marianne Moore
- Song by Margaret Widdemer
- Silence by Marianne Moore
- Scars on Paper by Marilyn Hacker
- Rosemary by Marianne Moore
- Release by Marie Starr
- Reading Runes by Marina Cecilia Kohon
- Portrait in Black and White by Marjorie Kanter
- Poetry by Marianne Moore
- Peter by Marianne Moore
- Passion by Sera Jacob
- Paragraphs from a Day-Book by Marilyn Hacker
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
