The Fearful
The Fearful - meaning Summary
Identity Distorted by Masks
The poem presents a speaker confronting fractured identity and obsessive body-image anxiety. Figures hide behind masks and pseudonyms; a woman adopts a male voice and hates her body, imagining motherhood as theft. Recurring insect and mask imagery conveys erosion of self and a wish for a flawless, deathlike perfection. The tone is claustrophobic and accusatory, tracing how performative personas consume authenticity and leave only isolation and exile from life.
Read Complete AnalysesThis man makes a pseudonym And crawls behind it like a worm. This woman on the telephone Says she is a man, not a woman. The mask increases, eats the worm, Stripes for mouth and eyes and nose, The voice of the woman hollows--- More and more like a dead one, Worms in the glottal stops. She hates The thought of a baby--- Stealer of cells, stealer of beauty--- She would rather be dead than fat, Dead and perfect, like Nefertit, Hearing the fierce mask magnify The silver limbo of each eye Where the child can never swim, Where there is only him and him.
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