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:
- hai_kou_unpublished.html
- Purdah by Sylvia Plath
- Robert Burns: Impromptu Lines To Captain Riddell: On Returning a Newspaper.
- Омар Хайям – Кто не грешит?
- The People by William Butler Yeats
- The Voice by Shel Silverstein
- Владимир Британишский – Историк и источник
- houses.html
- In The Early Pearly Morning
- Владимир Маяковский – Версаль
- Lyonnesse by Sylvia Plath
- Miss Brown by Samuel Stephen Wakdok
- On The Dunes by Sara Teasdale
- On The Benefit Received By His Majesty From Sea-Bathing, In The Year 1789 by William Cowper
- Dawn by Yosa Buson
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
- Владимир Корнилов – Чистый лист
- Владимир Корнилов – Черный день
- Владимир Корнилов – Боль
- Владимир Корнилов – Белые слоны
- Владимир Корнилов – Беатриче
- Владимир Корнилов – АЯМ
- Владимир Корнилов – Арена
- Владимир Корнилов – Анафемский сон
- Владимир Корнилов – 26 апреля
- Владимир Лифшиц – Вступление
- Владимир Лифшиц – Сверчок
- Владимир Лифшиц – Грустная шутка
- Владимир Лифшиц – Баллада о черством куске
- Владимир Ладыженский – Христос Воскрес, скворцы поют
- Владимир Костров – Закат приморский умирает
- Владимир Костров – Я стою, как дерево в лесу
- Владимир Костров – Выходец из волости лесистой
- Владимир Костров – Вот женщина с седыми волосами
- Владимир Костров – Вот избушка
- Владимир Костров – Видение на озере
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
