About Face

    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.