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

Poetry Monster – Home

A few random poems:

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 

• Pheasant by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Perseus by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Parliament Hill Fields by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Paralytic by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Spinster by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Spider by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Sow by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Southern Sunrise by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Snakecharmer by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Sculptor by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Rhyme by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Resolve by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Recantation by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Purdah by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Prospect by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Private Ground by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Point Shirley by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Poems, Potatoes by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Pheasant by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Perseus by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath

More external links (open in a new tab):

Russian Commerce Agency

Dealing Monster

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

Poems by Author and Category

The Poetry Repository – an online library of poems, poetry, verse and poetic works