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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• Parliament Hill Fields by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Paralytic by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Owl by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Ouija by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Night Shift by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Natural History by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Mystic by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Owl by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Mushrooms by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Ouija by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Morning Song by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Night Shift by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Moonrise by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Natural History by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Mirror by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Mystic by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Midsummer Mobile by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Mushrooms by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Metaphors by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Morning Song by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath

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