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 

• Address To The Scholars Of The Village School Of — by William Wordsworth by William Wordsworth
• Address To Kilchurn Castle, Upon Loch Awe by William Wordsworth by William Wordsworth
• Address To A Child During A Boisterous Winter By My Sister by William Wordsworth by William Wordsworth
• A Wren’s Nest by William Wordsworth by William Wordsworth
• A Whirl-Blast From Behind The Hill by William Wordsworth by William Wordsworth
• A Prophecy. February 1807 by William Wordsworth by William Wordsworth
• A Night Thought by William Wordsworth by William Wordsworth
• A Night-Piece by William Wordsworth by William Wordsworth
• A Narrow Girdle Of Rough Stones And Crags, by William Wordsworth by William Wordsworth
• A Flower Garden At Coleorton Hall, Leicestershire. by William Wordsworth by William Wordsworth
• A Farewell by William Wordsworth by William Wordsworth
• A Character by William Wordsworth by William Wordsworth
• Upon a Lady’s Fall Over a Stile, Gotten by Running From Her Love by William Wycherley by William Wycherley
• To his Indifferent Mistress by William Wycherley by William Wycherley
• The Poor Lover to His Rich Mistress about to Marry His Coxcombly Rival by William Wycherley by William Wycherley
• Sleep and Death by William Wycherley by William Wycherley
• On a Sea Fight, Which the Author was in, Betwixt the English and Dutch by William Wycherley by William Wycherley
• Love and Wine by William Wycherley by William Wycherley
• In Praise of Laziness by William Wycherley by William Wycherley
• Drinking-Song, A. To a Formal, Proud, Sober Coxcomb by William Wycherley by William Wycherley

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