About Face poem – Alice Fulton poems | Poetry Monster

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.

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Poems in English

An Arab Shepherd Is Searching For His Goat On Mount Zion by Yehuda Amichai by Yehuda Иехуда (Ludwig ) Amichai ‏יהודה עמיחי‏ Амихай (Pfeuffer)
A Precise Woman by Yehuda Amichai by Yehuda Иехуда (Ludwig ) Amichai ‏יהודה עמיחי‏ Амихай (Pfeuffer)
A Pity, We Were Such A Good Invention by Yehuda Amichai by Yehuda Иехуда (Ludwig ) Amichai ‏יהודה עמיחי‏ Амихай (Pfeuffer)
A Jewish Cemetery In Germany by Yehuda Amichai by Yehuda Иехуда (Ludwig ) Amichai ‏יהודה עמיחי‏ Амихай (Pfeuffer)
A Dog After Love by Yehuda Amichai by Yehuda Иехуда (Ludwig ) Amichai ‏יהודה עמיחי‏ Амихай (Pfeuffer)
Straw sandal half sunk by Yosa Buson by Yosa Ёса Buson Бусон 与謝蕪村
Sparrow singing by Yosa Buson by Yosa Ёса Buson Бусон 与謝蕪村
Ploughing the land by Yosa Buson by Yosa Ёса Buson Бусон 与謝蕪村
Old well by Yosa Buson by Yosa Ёса Buson Бусон 与謝蕪村
Not quite dark yet by Yosa Buson by Yosa Ёса Buson Бусон 与謝蕪村
My arm for a pillow by Yosa Buson by Yosa Ёса Buson Бусон 与謝蕪村
Listening to the moon by Yosa Buson by Yosa Ёса Buson Бусон 与謝蕪村
Lighting one candle by Yosa Buson by Yosa Ёса Buson Бусон 与謝蕪村
Yosa Buson – Yosa Buson by Yosa Ёса Buson Бусон 与謝蕪村
Hokku Poems in Four Seasons by Yosa Buson by Yosa Ёса Buson Бусон 与謝蕪村
His Holiness the Abbot by Yosa Buson by Yosa Ёса Buson Бусон 与謝蕪村
He’s on the porch by Yosa Buson by Yosa Ёса Buson Бусон 与謝蕪村
Harvest moon by Yosa Buson by Yosa Ёса Buson Бусон 与謝蕪村
Evening wind by Yosa Buson by Yosa Ёса Buson Бусон 与謝蕪村
Elegy to the Old Man Hokuju by Yosa Buson by Yosa Ёса Buson Бусон 与謝蕪村