Poetry is my life, my postmark, my hands, my kitchen, my face. by Anne Sexton

Poetry is my life, my postmark, my hands, my kitchen, my face.

Anne Sexton

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Categorized in : Hands Faces Kitchen

I put the gold star up in the front window by Anne Sexton

I put the gold star up in the front window

stars gold work

Let there be seasons so that our tongues will be rich in asparagu... by Anne Sexton

Let there be seasons so that our tongues will be rich in asparagus and limes.

asparagus tongue rich

stop the darkness and its amputations by Anne Sexton

stop the darkness and its amputations

real darkness hands

No one to hate except the slim fish of memory by Anne Sexton

No one to hate except the slim fish of memory

hate brain memories

Pulling off the fat diamond engagement ring, by Anne Sexton

Pulling off the fat diamond engagement ring,

divorce rip years

We talked death with burned-up intensity, both of us drawn to it like moths to an electric light bulb. Sucking on it!

bulbs intensity light

I like you; your eyes are full of language." [Letter to Anne Clar... by Anne Sexton

I like you; your eyes are full of language." [Letter to Anne Clarke, July 3, 1964.]

july eye i-like-you

And tonight our skin, our bones, that have survived our fathers, will meet, delicate in the hold, fastened together in an intricate lock. Then one of us will shout, "My need is more desperate!" and I will eat you slowly with kisses even though the killer in you has gotten out.

kissing skins father

The Witch's Life" 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 she would open the window and yell: Get out of my life! She had hair like kelp and a voice like a boulder. I think of her sometimes now and wonder if I am becoming her.

hair children thinking

And we are magic talking to itself, noisy and alone. I am queen of all my sins forgotten. Am I still lost? Once I was beautiful. Now I am myself

queens beautiful talking

I find now, swallowing one teaspoon of pain, that it drops downward to the past where it mixes with last year’s cupful and downward into a decade’s quart and downward into a lifetime’s ocean. I alternate treading water and deadman’s float.

pain ocean past

I tell you what you’ll never really know: all the medical hypothesis that explained my brain will never be as true as these struck leaves letting go.

medical letting-go brain

I was spread out dailyand examined for flaws. by Anne Sexton

I was spread out dailyand examined for flaws.

spread flaws

I suffer for birds and fireflies but not frogs, she said, and threw him across the room. Kaboom! Like a genie out of a samovar, a handsome prince arose in the corner of the bedroom.

firefly suffering bird

I lay there silently, hoarding my small dignity. I did not ask about the gate or the closet. I did not question the bedtime ritual where, on the cold bathroom tiles, I was spread out daily and examined for flaws. I did not know that my bones, those solids, those pieces of sculpture would not splinter.

hoarding splinters sculpture

In an old time by Anne Sexton

In an old time

wisdom kings wise

No matter whose bed you die in by Anne Sexton

No matter whose bed you die in

bed faith matter

Somebody who should have been born by Anne Sexton

Somebody who should have been born

loss baby blood

Now, in my middle age, by Anne Sexton

Now, in my middle age,

aging nineteen age

All the oxygen of the world was in them. by Anne Sexton

All the oxygen of the world was in them.

morning happiness baby