Anne Sexton

What can I do with this bayonet? Make a rose bush of it? Poke it into the moon? Shave my legs with its silver? Spear a goldfish? No. No. It was made In my

They sit in a row Outside the kindergarten, Black, red, brown, all With those brass buckles. Remember when you couldn’t Buckle your own Overshoe Or tie your own Overshoe Or tie your own shoe

The day of fire is coming, the thrush, Will fly ablaze like a little sky rocket, The beetle will sink like a giant bulldozer, And at the breaking of the morning the houses Will

Good for visiting hospitals or charitable work. Take some time to attend to your health. Surely I will be disquieted By the hospital, that body zone Bodies wrapped in elastic bands, Bodies cased in

I hired a carpenter To build my coffin And last night I lay in it, Braced by a pillow, Sniffing the wood, Letting the old king Breathe on me, Thinking of my poor murdered

I am the love killer, I am murdering the music we thought so special, That blazed between us, over and over. I am murdering me, where I kneeled at your kiss. I am pushing

This is the key to it. This is the key to everything. Preciously. I am worse than the gamekeeper’s children Picking for dust and bread. Here I am drumming up perfume. Let me go

I was tired of being a woman, Tired of the spoons and the post, Tired of my mouth and my breasts, Tired of the cosmetics and the silks. There were still men who sat

She is all there. She was melted carefully down for you And cast up from your childhood, Cast up from your one hundred favorite aggies. She has always been there, my darling. She is,

Leaping, leaping, leaping, Down line by line, Growling at the cadavers, Filling the holy jugs with their piss, Falling into windows and mauling the parents, But soft, kiss-soft, And sobbing sobbing Into their awful

You, Doctor Martin, walk From breakfast to madness. Late August, I speed through the antiseptic tunnel Where the moving dead still talk Of pushing their bones against the thrust Of cure. And I am

Moist, moist, The heat leaking through the hinges, Sun baking the roof like a pie And I and thou and she Eating, working, sweating, Droned up on the heat. The sun as read as

What is death, I ask. What is life, you ask. I give them both my buttocks, My two wheels rolling off toward Nirvana. They are neat as a wallet, Opening and closing on their

Some ghosts are women, Neither abstract nor pale, Their breasts as limp as killed fish. Not witches, but ghosts Who come, moving their useless arms Like forsaken servants. Not all ghosts are women, I

For the angels who inhabit this town, Although their shape constantly changes, Each night we leave some cold potatoes And a bowl of milk on the windowsill. Usually they inhabit heaven where, By the

For months my hand was sealed off In a tin box. Nothing was there but the subway railings. Perhaps it is bruised, I thought, And that is why they have locked it up. You

Notice how he has numbered the blue veins In my breast. Moreover there are ten freckles. Now he goes left. Now he goes right. He is buiding a city, a city of flesh. He’s

A woman Who loves a woman Is forever young. The mentor And the student Feed off each other. Many a girl Had an old aunt Who locked her in the study To keep the

Busy, with an idea for a code, I write Signals hurrying from left to right, Or right to left, by obscure routes, For my own reasons; taking a word like writes Down tiers of

A story, a story! (Let it go. Let it come.) I was stamped out like a Plymouth fender Into this world. First came the crib With its glacial bars. Then dolls And the devotion

A young man is afraid of his demon and puts his hand Over the demon’s mouth sometimes… D. H. Lawrence I mentioned my demon to a friend And the friend swam in oil and

They work with herbs And penicillin They work with gentleness And the scalpel. They dig out the cancer, Close an incision And say a prayer To the poverty of the skin. They are not

It is snowing and death bugs me As stubborn as insomnia. The fierce bubbles of chalk, The little white lesions Settle on the street outside. It is snowing and the ninety Year old woman

I have a pack of letters, I have a pack of memories. I could cut out the eyes of both. I could wear them like a patchwork apron. I could stick them in the

It is half winter, half spring, And Barbara and I are standing Confronting the ocean. Its mouth is open very wide, And it has dug up its green, Throwing it, throwing it at the

Just once I knew what life was for. In Boston, quite suddenly, I understood; Walked there along the Charles River, Watched the lights copying themselves, All neoned and strobe-hearted, opening Their mouths as wide

It was also my violent heart that broke, Falling down the front hall stairs. It was also a message I never spoke, Calling, riser after riser, who cares About you, who cares, splintering up

His awful skin Stretched out by some tradesman Is like my skin, here between my fingers, A kind of webbing, a kind of frog. Surely when first born my face was this tiny And

Because there was no other place To flee to, I came back to the scene of the disordered senses, Came back last night at midnight, Arriving in the thick June night Without luggage or

Being kissed on the back Of the knee is a moth At the windowscreen and Yes my darling a dot On the fathometer is Tinkerbelle with her cough And twice I will give up

In Memoriam What’s missing is the eyeballs In each of us, but it doesn’t matter Because you’ve got the bucks, the bucks, the bucks. You let me touch them, fondle the green faces Lick

Let the flowers make a journey On Monday so that I can see Ten daisies in a blue vase With perhaps one red ant Crawling to the gold center. A bit of the field

Coon, why did you come to this dance With a mask on? Why not the tin man And his rainbow girl? Why not Racine, His hair marcelled down to his chest? Why not come

“Do you like me?” I asked the blue blazer. No answer. Silence bounced out of his books. Silence fell off his tongue And sat between us And clogged my throat. It slaughtered my trust.

Consider Icarus, pasting those sticky wintgs on, Testing that strange little tug at his shoulder blade, And think of that first flawless moment over the lawn Of the labyrinth. Think of the difference it

My God, my God, what queer corner am I in? Didn’t I die, blood running down the post, Lungs gagging for air, die there for the sin Of anyone, my sour mouth giving up

Something Cold is in the air, An aura of ice And phlegm. All day I’ve built A lifetime and now The sun sinks to Undo it. The horizon bleeds And sucks its thumb. The

Consider A girl who keeps slipping off, Arms limp as old carrots, Into the hypnotist’s trance, Into a spirit world Speaking with the gift of tongues. She is stuck in the time machine, Suddenly

I would like to bury All the hating eyes Under the sand somewhere off The North Atlantic and suffocate Them with the awful sand And put all their colors to sleep In that soft

When I was a child There was an old woman in our neighborhood whom we called The Witch. All day she peered from her second story Window From behind the wrinkled curtains And sometimes

In my dream, Drilling into the marrow Of my entire bone, My real dream, I’m walking up and down Beacon Hill Searching for a street sign Namely MERCY STREET. Not there. I try the

Everything here is yellow and green. Listen to its throat, its earthskin, The bone dry voices of the peepers As they throb like advertisements. The small animals of the woods Are carrying their deathmasks

Darkness As black as your eyelid, Poketricks of stars, The yellow mouth, The smell of a stranger, Dawn coming up, Dark blue, No stars, The smell of a love, Warmer now As authenic as

We are America. We are the coffin fillers. We are the grocers of death. We pack them in crates like cauliflowers. The bomb opens like a shoebox. And the child? The child is certainly

It comes oozing Out of flowers at night, It comes out of the rain If a snake looks skyward, It comes out of chairs and tables If you don’t point at them and say

Tommy is three and when he’s bad His mother dances with him. She puts on the record, “Red Roses for a Blue Lady” And throws him across the room. Mind you, She never laid

Anger, As black as a hook, Overtakes me. Each day, Each Nazi Took, at 8:00 A. M., a baby And sauteed him for breakfast In his frying pan. And death looks on with a

In the dream The swastika is neon And flashes like a strobe light Into my eyes, all colors, All vibrations And I see the killer in him And he turns on an oven, An

“Young girls in old Arabia were often buried alive next To their fathers, apparently as sacrifice to the goddesses Of the tribes…” Harold Feldman, “Children of the Desert” Psychoanalysis And Psychoanalytic Review, Fall 1958

I am not lazy. I am on the amphetamine of the soul. I am, each day, Typing out the God My typewriter believes in. Very quick. Very intense, Like a wolf at a live

Loving me with my shows off Means loving my long brown legs, Sweet dears, as good as spoons; And my feet, those two children Let out to play naked. Intricate nubs, My toes. No

Today the circus poster Is scabbing off the concrete wall And the children have forgotten If they knew at all. Father, do you remember? Only the sound remains, The distant thump of the good

Many a miner has gone Into the deep pit To receive the dust of a kiss, An ore-cell. He has gone with his lamp Full of mole eyes Deep deep and has brought forth

I am in a crate, the crate that was ours, Full of white shirts and salad greens, The icebox knocking at our delectable knocks, And I wore movies in my eyes, And you wore

I have gone out, a possessed witch, Haunting the black air, braver at night; Dreaming evil, I have done my hitch Over the plain houses, light by light: Lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.

The rain drums down like red ants, Each bouncing off my window. The ants are in great pain And they cry out as they hit As if their little legs were only Stitche don

Live or die, but don’t poison everything… Well, death’s been here For a long time It has a hell of a lot To do with hell And suspicion of the eye And the religious

I was wrapped in black Fur and white fur and You undid me and then You placed me in gold light And then you crowned me, While snow fell outside The door in diagonal

Some women marry houses. It’s another kind of skin; it has a heart, A mouth, a liver and bowel movements. The walls are permanent and pink. See how she sits on her knees all

My business is words. Words are like labels, Or coins, or better, like swarming bees. I confess I am only broken by the sources of things; As if words were counted like dead bees

The correct death is written in. I will fill the need. My bow is stiff. My bow is in readiness. I am the bullet and the hook. I am cocked and held ready. In

Mother, Strange goddess face Above my milk home, That delicate asylum, I ate you up. All my need took You down like a meal. What you gave I remember in a dream: The freckled

You always read about it: The plumber with the twelve children Who wins the Irish Sweepstakes. From toilets to riches. That story. Or the nursemaid, Some luscious sweet from Denmark Who captures the oldest

In his tenth July some instinct Taught him to arm the waiting wave, A giant where its mouth hung open. He rode on the lip that buoyed him there And buckled him under. The

1. Mother, my Mary Gray, Once resident of Gloucester And Essex County, A photostat of your will Arrived in the mail today. This is the division of money. I am one third Of your

In my dream I milked a cow, The terrible udder Like a great rubber lily Sweated in my fingers And as I yanked, Waiting for the moon juice, Waiting for the white mother, Blood

“Angels of the love affair, do you know that other, The dark one, that other me?” 1. ANGEL OF FIRE AND GENITALS Angel of fire and genitals, do you know slime, That green mama

They come on to my clean Sheet of paper and leave a Rorschach blot. They do not do this to be mean, They do it to give me a sign They want me, as

I am the only actor. It is difficult for one woman To act out a whole play. The play is my life, My solo act. My running after the hands And never catching up.

Roach, foulest of creatures, Who attacks with yellow teeth And an army of cousins big as shoes, You are lumps of coal that are mechanized And when I turn on the light you scuttle

“You speak to me of narcissism but I reply that it is A matter of my life” – Artaud “At this time let me somehow bequeath all the leftovers To my daughters and their

One day He Tipped His top hat And walked Out of the room, Ending the argument. He stomped off Saying: I don’t give guarantees. I was left Quite alone Using up the darkness I

Oh sharp diamond, my mother! I could not count the cost Of all your faces, your moods That present that I lost. Sweet girl, my deathbed, My jewel-fingered lady, Your portrait flickered all night

“Too many things are occurring for even a big heart to hold.” – From an essay by W. B. Yeats Big heart, Wide as a watermelon, But wise as birth, There is so much

Who’s she, that one in your arms? She’s the one I carried my bones to And built a house that was just a cot And built a life that was over an hour And

Frau Doktor, Mama Brundig, Take out your contacts, Remove your wig. I write for you. I entertain. But frogs come out Of the sky like rain. Frogs arrive With an ugly fury. You are

Herbs, garlic, Cheese, please let me in! Souffles, salad, Parker House rolls, Please let me in! Cook Helen, Why are you so cross, Why is your kitchen verboten? Couldn’t you just teach me To

1. DREAMS I was an ice baby. I turned to sky blue. My tears became two glass beads. My mouth stiffened into a dumb howl. They say it was a dream But I remember

The end of the affair is always death. She’s my workshop. Slippery eye, Out of the tribe of myself my breath Finds you gone. I horrify Those who stand by. I am fed. At

I’ve been going right on, page by page, Since we last kissed, two long dolls in a cage, Two hunger-mongers throwing a myth in and out, Double-crossing out lives with doubt, Leaving us separate

1. I am thirty this November. You are still small, in your fourth year. We stand watching the yellow leaves go queer, Flapping in the winter rain. Falling flat and washed. And I remember

My faith Is a great weight Hung on a small wire, As doth the spider Hang her baby on a thin web, As doth the vine, Twiggy and wooden, Hold up grapes Like eyeballs,

That does not keep me from having a terrible need of shall I say the word religion. Then I go out at night to paint the stars. Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to

Somebody who should have been born Is gone. Just as the earth puckered its mouth, Each bud puffing out from its knot, I changed my shoes, and then drove south. Up past the Blue