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:
- Black Stone On Top Of Nothing by Philip Levine
- Sonnet # 18 by Luis A. Estable
- Вера Полозкова – Мой великий кардиотерапевт
- Юргис Балтрушайтис – Утренние песни
- Outside The Village Church poem – Alfred Austin
- To a Steam Roller by Marianne Moore
- The Squirrel by Todd H. C. Fischer
- Our Army Of The Dead by Will McKendree Carleton
- Shattered Dreams by SWARAJ PRASAD
- Abuses and Awards poem – Andrei Voznesensky poems
- The Travelling Bear poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Hurting Dive by Satish Verma
- The face wanted by Vinko Kalinić
- Николай Заболоцкий – Читайте, деревья, стихи Гезиода
- Алишер Навои – Моя безумная душа в обломках
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
- Анатолий Жигулин – Ах, речка, речка Тебердинка
- Анатолий Жигулин – Ах, как весело листья летят
- Аля Кудряшева – Зима застыла среди теней
- Аля Кудряшева – Замылим, потом замолим
- Аля Кудряшева – Я тут недавно встретила свое прошлое
- Аля Кудряшева – Я работаю солнечной батареей
- Аля Кудряшева – Я этой ночью уйду, не спи
- Аля Кудряшева – Ходят катера по Малой Невке
- Аля Кудряшева – Все не то чтобы исчезло
- Аля Кудряшева – Вечер большого дня
- Аля Кудряшева – В этом городе птичий полет шелестит быстролистыми кленами
- Аля Кудряшева – Тяжело деревьям зимой
- Аля Кудряшева – Ты рисуй, девочка, небо пошире
- Аля Кудряшева – Трилогия перед годом (Цепочка ассоциаций)
- Аля Кудряшева – Тишина
- Аля Кудряшева – Театр-весна
- Аля Кудряшева – Такие слишком медовые эти луны
- Аля Кудряшева – Снова current
- Аля Кудряшева – Слишком уж зол ветер
- Аля Кудряшева – Рыбный вальсок
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