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She Suffers According To The Digits Of My Hate. I Hear The Filaments Of Alabaster. I Would Lie Down With Them And Lift My Madness Off Like A Wig. I Would Lie Outside In A Room Of Wool And Let The Snow Cover Me. Paris White Or Flake White Or Argentine, All In The Washbasin Of My Mouth, Calling “oh.” I Am Empty. I Am Witless. Death Is Here. There Is No Other Settlement.

-Anne Sexton

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She Suffers According To

Anne Sexton

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She Suffers According To The Digits Of My Hate. I Hear The Filaments Of Alabaster. I Would Lie Down With Them And Lift My Madness Off Like A Wig. I Would Lie Outside In A Room Of Wool And Let The Snow Cover Me. Paris White Or Flake White Or Argentine, All In The Washbasin Of My Mouth, Calling “oh.” I Am Empty. I Am Witless. Death Is Here. There Is No Other Settlement.

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My Ideas Are A Curse. They Spring From A Radical Discontent With The Awful Order Of Things. I Play Clown. I Play Carpenter. I Play Nurse. I Play Witch.

Thumbs Grow Into My Throat. I Wear Slaps Like A Spot Of Rouge.

Now I Am Just An Elderly Lady Who Is Full Of Spleen, Who Humps Around Greater Boston In A God-awful Hat, Who Never Lived And Yet Outlived Her Time, Hating Men And Dogs And Democrats.

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.

Let The Light Be Called Day So That Men May Grow Corn Or Take Busses.

The Stars Are Pears That No One Can Reach, Even For A Wedding. Perhaps For A Death.

The Ground Has On Its Clothes. The Trees Poke Out Of Sheets And Each Branch Wears The Sock Of God.

I Am Tearing The Feathers Out Of The Pillows, Waiting, Waiting For Daddy To Come Home And Stuff Me So Full Of Our Infected Child That I Turn Invisible, But Married, At Last.

My Eyes, Those Sluts, Those Whores, Would Play No More.

At Six I Lived In A Graveyard Full Of Dolls, Avoiding Myself, My Body, The Suspect In Its Grotesque House.

After A Disaster Strikes, It Can Be Very Devastating And Very Challenging. You're Going To Need A Lot Of Strength And Energy, And The American Red Cross Suggests You Go For The High Protein Items.

In A Letter (no Matter How Quickly It Is Written Or Honestly Or Freely Or Lovingly) It Is More Possible To Be Loving And Lovable, More Possible To Reach Out And To Take In ... I Feel I Have Somehow Deceived You Into Thinking This Is Really A Human Relationship. It Is A Letter Relationship Between Humans.

Meanwhile In My Head, I’m Undergoing Open-heart Surgery.

My Sleeping Pill Is White. It Is A Splendid Pearl; It Floats Me Out Of Myself, My Stung Skin As Alien As A Loose Bolt Of Cloth.

But Suicides Have A Special Language. Like Carpenters They Want To Know Which Tools. They Never Ask Why Build. Twice I Have So Simply Declared Myself, Have Possessed The Enemy, Eaten The Enemy, Have Taken On His Craft, His Magic.

O Yellow Eye, Let Me Be Sick With Your Heat, Let Me Be Feverish And Frowning.

The Fish Are Naked. The Fish Are Always Awake. They Are The Color Of Old Spoons And Caramels.

Yesterday I Did Not Want To Be Borrowed But This Is The Typewriter That Sits Before Me And Love Is Where Yesterday Is At.

What A Lay Me Down This Is With Two Pink, Two Orange, Two Green, Two White Goodnights.

I Am Younger Each Year At The First Snow. When I See It, Suddenly, In The Air, All Little And White And Moving; Then I Am In Love Again And Very Young And I Believe Everything.

The Grass As Bristly And Stout As Chives And Me Wondering When The Ground Will Break And Me Wondering How Anything Fragile Survives

I Love You. You Are Closest To My Heart, Closer Than Any Other Human Being. You Are My Extension. You Are My Prayer. You Are My Belief In God. For Better Or Worse You Inherit Me.

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.

Watch Out For Intellect, Because It Knows So Much It Knows Nothing And Leaves You Hanging Upside Down, Mouthing Knowledge As Your Heart Falls Out Of Your Mouth.

She Is So Naked And Singular. She Is The Sum Of Yourself And Your Dream. Climb Her Like A Monument, Step After Step. She Is Solid.

Rocks Crumble, Make New Forms, Oceans Move The Continents, Mountains Rise Up And Down Like Ghosts Yet All Is Natural, All Is Change.

Sometimes The Soul Takes Pictures Of Things It Has Wished For, But Never Seen.

I Was Spread Out Dailyand Examined For Flaws.

Look To Your Heart That Flutters In And Out Like A Moth. God Is Not Indifferent To Your Need. You Have A Thousand Prayers But God Has One.

Perhaps I Am No One. True, I Have A Body And I Cannot Escape From It. I Would Like To Fly Out Of My Head, But That Is Out Of The Question.

My Safe, Safe Psychosis Is Broken. It Was Hard. It Was Made Of Stone. It Covered My Face Like A Mask. But It Has Cracked.

Man Is A Bird Full Of Mud, I Say Aloud. And Death Looks On With A Casual Eye And Scratches His Anus.

You Must Be A Poet, A Lady Of Evil Luck Desiring To Be What You Are Not, Longing To Be What You Can Only Visit.

Yes, I Know. Death Sits With His Key In My Lock. Not One Day Is Taken For Granted. Even Nursery Rhymes Have Put Me In Hock.

Once I Was Beautiful. Now I Am Myself, Counting This Row And That Row Of Moccasins Waiting On The Silent Shelf.

I Cannot Walk An Inch / Without Trying To Walk To God.

Life Is A Trick, Life Is A Kitten In A Sack.

My Business Is Words. Words Are Like Labels, Or Coins, Or Better, Like Swarming Bees.

Big Heart, Wide As A Watermelon, But Wise As Birth, There Is So Much Abundance In The People I Have.

One Can't Build Little White Picket Fences To Keep Nightmares Out.

The Beautiful Feeling After Writing A Poem Is On The Whole Better Even Than After Sex, And That's Saying A Lot.

Poetry Is My Life, My Postmark, My Hands, My Kitchen, My Face.

I'm Hunting For The Truth. It Might Be A Kind Of Poetic Truth, And Not Just A Factual One, Because Behind Everything That Happens To You, There Is Another Truth, A Secret Life.

I Think It Will Be A Miracle If I Don't Someday End Up Killing Myself.

All Day I've Built A Lifetime And Now The Sun Sinks To Undo It.

I Hoard Books. They Are People Who Do Not Leave.

There Is An Animal Inside Me, Clutching Fast To My Heart, A Huge Crab.

Don’t Worry If They Say You’re Crazy. They Said That About Me And Yet I Was Saner Than All Of Them. I Knew. No Matter. You Know. Insane Or Sane, You Know. It’s A Good Thing To Know - No Matter What They Call It.

I Have Forgiven All The Old Actors For Dying. A New One Comes On With The Same Lines, Like Large White Growths, In His Mouth. The Dancers Come On From The Wings, Perfectly Mated.

When Someone Kisses Someone Or Flushes The Toilet It Is My Other Who Sits In A Ball And Cries. My Other Beats A Tin Drum In My Heart. My Other Hangs Up Laundry As I Try To Sleep. My Other Cries And Cries And Cries When I Put On A Cocktail Dress.

Please God, We're All Right Here. Please Leave Us Alone. Don't Send Death In His Fat Red Suit And His Ho-ho Baritone.

Be Careful Of Words, / ... They Can Be Both Daisies And Bruises.

Writers Are Such Phonies: They Sometimes Have Wise Insights But They Don't Live By Them At All. That's What Writers Are Like...you Think They Know Something, But Usually They Are Just Messes.

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O Fallen Angel, The Companion Within Me, Whisper Something Holy Before You Pinch Me Into The Grave.

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Depression Is Boring, I Think And I Would Do Better To Make Some Soup And Light Up The Cave.

The Little Girl Skipped By Under The Wrinkled Oak Leaves And Held Fast To A Replica Of Herself.

I Said, The Poets Are There I Hear Them Singing And Lying Around Their Round Table And Around Me Still.

Give Me Your Skin As Sheer As A Cobweb, Let Me Open It Up And Listen In And Scoop Out The Dark.

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And If I Tried To Give You Something Else, Something Outside Myself, You Would Not Know That The Worst Of Anyone Can Be, Finally, An Accident Of Hope

Today God Gives Milk / And I Have The Pail.

It Is June. I Am Tired Of Being Brave.

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Women Are Born Twice.

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I Burn The Way Money Burns.

O Starry Night, This Is How I Want To Die

My Death From The Wrists, Two Name Tags, Blood Worn Like A Corsage To Bloom One On The Left And One On The Right.

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We Do Not Explain My Husband's Insane Abuse And We Do Not Say Why Your Wild-haired Wife Has Fled Or That My Father Opened Like A Walnut And Then Was Dead. Your Palms Fold Over Me Like Knees. Love Is The Only Use.

I Am Crazy As Hell, But I Know It. And Knowing It Is A Kind Of Sanity That Makes The Sickness Worse.

But My Future Is A Secret. / It Is As Shy As A Mole.

Let There Be Seasons So That Our Tongues Will Be Rich In Asparagus And Limes.

Poetry To Me Is Prayer.

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... Man Is Eating The Earth Up Like A Candy Bar.

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Blind With Love, My Daughter Has Cried Nightly For Horses, Those Long-necked Marchers And Churners That She Has Mastered, Any And All, Reigning Them In Like A Circus Hand.

In An Old Time There Was A King As Wise As A Dictionary.

I Sit At My Desk Each Night With No Place To Go, Opening The Wrinkled Maps Of Milwaukee And Buffalo, The Whole U.s., Its Cemeteries, Its Arbitrary Time Zones, Through Routes Like Small Veins, Capitals Like Small Stones.

Letters Are False Really - They Are Expressions Of The Way You Wish You Were Instead Of The Way You Are.

Once Upon A Time We Were All Born, Popped Out Like Jelly Rolls Forgetting Our Fishdom, The Pleasuring Seas, The Country Of Comfort, Spanked Into The Oxygens Of Death.

For I Could Not Read Or Speak And On The Long Nights I Could Not Turn The Moon Off Or Count The Lights Of Cars Across The Ceiling.

The Summer Has Seized You, As When, Last Month In Amalfi, I Saw Lemons As Large As Your Desk-side Globe-that Miniature Map Of The World-and I Could Mention, Too, The Market Stalls Of Mushrooms And Garlic Bugs All Engorged. Or I Even Think Of The Orchard Next Door, Where The Berries Are Done And The Apples Are Beginning To Swell. And Once, With Our First Backyard,i Remember I Planted An Acre Of Yellow Beans We Couldn't Eat.

Nature Is Full Of Teeth That Come In One By One, Then Decay, Fall Out.

But Even In A Telephone Booth Evil Can Seep Out Of The Receiver And We Must Cover It With A Mattress, And Then Tear It From Its Roots And Bury It, Bury It.

The Day Of Fire Is Coming, The Thrush Will Fly Ablaze Like A Little Sky Rocket.

I Will Be Steel! I Will Build A Steel Bridge Over My Need! I Will Build A Bomb Shelter Over My Heart! But My Future Is A Secret. It Is As Shy As A Mole.

Let God Be Some Tribal Female Who Is Known But Forbidden.

You Cutting The Lawn, Fixing The Machines, All This Leprous Day And Then More Vodka, More Soda And The Pond Forgiving Our Bodies, The Pond Sucking Out The Throb.

My Life Has Appeared Unclothed In Court, Detail By Detail, Death-bone Witness By Death-bone Witness, And I Was Shamed At The Verdict.

I'll Vacuum Up My Stale Hair, I'll Pay All My Neighbors' Bad Debts, I'll Write A Poem Called Yellow And Put My Lips Down To Drink It Up.

Sometimes I Fly Like An Eagle But With The Wings Of A Wren

I've Grown Tired Of Love You Are The Trouble With Me I Watch You Walk Right By

The Family Story Tells, And It Was Told True, Of My Great-grandfather Who Begat Eight Genius Children And Bought Twelve Almost New Grand Pianos. He Left A Considerable Estate When He Died.

I Was The Girl Of The Chain Letter, The Girl Full Of Talk Of Coffins And Keyholes, The One Of The Telephone Bills, The Wrinkled Photo And The Lost Connections.

Not That It Was Beautiful, But That I Found Some Order There.

Pulling Off The Fat Diamond Engagement Ring, Pulling Off The Elopement Wedding Ring, And Holding Them, Clicking Them In Thumb And Forefinger, The Indent Of Twenty-five Years, Like A Tiny Rip Leaving Its Mark.

If I Could Blame It On All The Mothers And Fathers Of The World, They Of The Lessons, The Pellets Of Power, They Of The Love Surrounding You Like Batter ... Blame It On God Perhaps? He Of The First Opening That Pushed Us All Into Our First Mistakes? No, I'll Blame It On Man For Man Is God And Man Is Eating The Earth Up Like A Candy Bar And Not One Of Them Can Be Left Alone With The Ocean For It Is Known He Will Gulp It All Down. The Stars (possibly) Are Safe. At Least For The Moment. The Stars Are Pears That No One Can Reach, Even For A Wedding. Perhaps For A Death.

Despite My Asbestos Gloves, The Cough Is Filling Me With Black, And A Red Powder Seeps Through My Veins.

The Trouble With Therapy Is That It Makes Life Go Backwards.

It Is A Dead Heart. It Is Inside Of Me. It Is A Stranger Yet Once It Was Agreeable, Opening And Closing Like A Clam.

The Boys And Girls Are One Tonight. They Unbutton Blouses. They Unzip Flies. They Take Off Shoes. They Turn Off The Light. The Glimmering Creatures Are Full Of Lies. They Are Eating Each Other. They Are Overfed. At Night, Alone, I Marry The Bed.

The Sky Breaks. It Sags And Breathes Upon My Face. In The Presence Of Mine Enemies, Mine Enemies The World Is Full Of Enemies. There Is No Safe Place.

The Marriage Twists, Holds Firm, A Sailor's Knot.

I Leave You, Home, When I'm Ripped From The Doorstep By Commerce Or Fate. Then I Submit To The Awful Subway Of The World.

To Love Another Is Somethinglike Prayer And It Can't Be Planned, You Just Fallinto Its Arms Because Your Belief Undoes Your Disbelief.

God Is Only Mocked By Believers.

I Brush My Hair, Waiting In The Pain Machine For My Bones To Get Hard, For The Soft, Soft Bones That Were Laid Apart And Were Screwed Together. They Will Knit. And The Other Corpse, The Fractured Heart, I Feed It Piecemeal, Little Chalice. I'm Good To It.

I See Myself As One Would See Another. I Have Been Cut In Two.

Being Kissed On The Back Of The Knee Is A Moth At The Windowscreen.

I'm An Empress. I Wear An Apron. My Typewriter Writes. It Didn't Break The Way It Warned. Even Crazy, I'm As Nice As A Chocolate Bar.

Earth, Earthriding Your Merry-go-roundtoward Extinction,right To The Rootsthickening The Oceans Like Gravy,festering In Your Caves,you Are Becoming A Latrine.

I Grow Old On My Bitterness.

Love? Be It Man. Be It Woman. It Must Be A Wave You Want To Glide In On, Give Your Body To It, Give Your Laugh To It, Give, When The Gravelly Sand Takes You, Your Tears To The Land. To Love Another Is Something Like Prayer And Can't Be Planned, You Just Fall Into Its Arms Because Your Belief Undoes Your Disbelief.

I'm The Crazy One Who Thinks That Words Reach People.

Talk To Me About Sadness. I Talk About It Too Much In My Own Head But I Never Mind Others Talking About It Either; I Occasionally Feel Like I Tremendously Need Others To Talk About It As Well.

It Would Be Pleasant To Be Drunk.

I Think Of Myself As Writing For One Person, That One Perfect Reader Who Understands And Loves.

Somebody Who Should Have Been Born Is Gone. Yes, Woman, Such Logic Will Lead To Loss Without Death. Or Say What You Meant, You Coward . . . This Baby That I Bleed.

My Husband Sings Baa Baa Black Sheep And We Pretend That All's Certain And Good, That The Marriage Won't End.

Cinderella And The Prince Lived, They Say, Happily Ever After, Like Two Dolls In A Museum Case Never Bothered By Diapers Or Dust, Never Arguing Over The Timing Of An Egg, Never Telling The Same Story Twice.

There Is Joy In All: In The Hair I Brush Each Morning, In The Cannon Towel, Newly Washed, That I Rub My Body With Each Morning.

The Tongue, The Chinese Say, Is Like A Sharp Knife: It Kills Without Drawing Blood.

As For Me, I Am A Watercolor. I Wash Off.

I Am Younger Each Year At The First Snow.

The Silence Is Death. It Comes Each Day With Its Shock To Sit On My Shoulder, A White Bird, And Peck At The Black Eyes And The Vibrating Red Muscle Of My Mouth.

I Am Stuffing Your Mouth With Your Promises And Watching You Vomit Them Out Upon My Face.

I Think I've Been Writing Black Poems All Along, Wearing My White Mask. I'm Always The Victim ... But No Longer!

Here In The Hospital, I Say,that Is Not My Body, Not My Body.i Am Not Here For The Doctorsto Read Like A Recipe.

Thief!- How Did You Crawl Into, Crawl Down Alone Into The Death I Wanted So Badly And For So Long.

Sorrow Is Easier Than Guilt.

Suicides Have A Special Language. Like Carpenters They Want To Know Which Tools. They Never Ask Why Build.

Our Children Tremble In Their Teen-age Cribs, Whirling Off On A Thumb Or A Motorcycle.

There Is A Good Look That I Wear Like A Blood Clot. I Have Sewn It Over My Left Breast. I Have Made A Vocation Of It.

This Is No Dream Just My Oily Life Where The People Are Alibis And The Street Is Unfindable For An Entire Lifetime.

Women Tell Time By The Body. They Are Like Clocks. They Are Always Fastened To The Earth, Listening For Its Small Animal Noises.

God Has A Brown Voice, As Soft And Full As Beer.

Fee-fi-fo-fum - Now I'm Borrowed. Now I'm Numb.

I Keep Feeling That There Isn't One Poem Being Written By Any One Of Us - Or A Book Or Anything Like That. The Whole Life Of Us Writers, The Whole Product I Guess I Mean, Is The One Long Poem - A Community Effort If You Will. It's All The Same Poem. It Doesn't Belong To Any One Writer - It's God's Poem Perhaps. Or God's People's Poem.

Come, My Pretender, My Fritter, My Bubbler, My Chicken Biddy! Oh Succulent One, It Is But One Turn In The Road And I Would Be A Cannibal!

You Lay, A Small Knuckle On My White Bed; Lay, That Fist Like A Snail, Small And Strong At My Breast. Your Lips Are Animals; You Are Fed With Love. At First, Hunger Is Not Wrong.

When The Cow Gives Blood And The Christ Is Born We Must All Eat Sacrifices. We Must All Eat Beautiful Women.

Think Of Innocent Icarus Who Is Doing Quite Well: Larger Than A Sail, Over The Fog And The Blast Of The Plushy Ocean, He Goes. Admire His Wings!

Stop The Darkness And Its Amputations And Find The Real Mccoy In The Private Holiness Of My Hands.

Even So, I Must Admire Your Skill. You Are So Gracefully Insane.

Put Your Ear Down Close To Your Soul And Listen Hard.

The Man Inside Of Woman Ties A Knot So That They Will Never Again Be Separate.

I Who Was A House Full Of Bowel Movement, I Who Was A Defaced Altar, I Who Wanted To Crawl Toward God Could Not Move Nor Eat Bread.

Fear / A Motor, / Pumps Me Around And Around / Until I Fade Slowly.

I Am A Collection Of Dismantled Almosts.

To Tell The Truth Days Are All The Same Size And Words Aren't Much Company.

Telling The Truth

Our Checks Are Pale. Our Wallets Are Invalids. Past Due, Past Due, Is What Our Bills Are Saying And Yet We Kiss In Every Corner, Scuffing The Dust And The Cat. Love Rises Like Bread As We Go Bust.

I Am Not At Home In Myself. I Am My Own Stranger.

Inside Many Of Us Is A Small Old Man Who Wants To Get Out.

As A Writer One Has To Take The Chance On Being A Fool.

Father, You Died Once, Salted Down At Fifty-nine, Packed Down Like A Big Snow Angel, Wasn't That Enough?

Daisies In Water Are The Longest Lasting Flower You Can Give To Someone. Fact. Buy Daisies. Not Roses.

Someone Is Dead. Even The Trees Know It, Those Poor Old Dancers Who Come On Lewdly, All Pea-green Scarfs And Spine Pole.

I Would Like To Bury All The Hating Eyes Under The Sand Somewhere.

Poor Thing. To Die And Never See Brooklyn.

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.

I Imitatea Memory Of Beliefthat I Do Not Own.

And The Aura Of You Remains, Remains, Remains...

I Tell It Stories Now And Then And Feed It Images Like Honey. I Will Not Speculate Today With Poems That Think They're Money.

I Must Always Forget How One Word Is Able To Pick Out Another, To Manner Another, Until I Have Got Something I Might Have Said... But Did Not.

All I Am Is The Trick Of Words Writing Themselves.

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.

I Am Out Of Practice At Living. You Are As Brave As A Motorcycle.

All Who Love Have Lied.

Now That I Have Written Many Words, And Let Out So Many Loves, For So Many, And Been Altogether What I Always Was A Woman Of Excess, Of Zeal And Greed, I Find The Effort Useless.

To Be Without God Is To Be A Snake / Who Wants To Swallow An Elephant.

All Considerations For These Human Remains! They Must Have An Escort! They Are Classified!

Not That It Was Beautiful, But That, In The End, There Was A Certain Sense Of Order There; Something Worth Learning In That Narrow Diary Of My Mind

God Went Out Of Me As If The Sea Dried Up Like Sandpaper, As If The Sun Became A Latrine.

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

The Windows, The Starving Windows That Drive The Trees Like Nails Into My Heart.

The Joy That Isn't Shared Dies Young.

It Was My First Doll That Water Went Into And Water Came Out Of Much Earlier It Was The Diaper I Wore And The Dirt Thereof And My Mother Hating Me For It

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.

They [daisies] Are My Favorite Flower. There Is Something Innocent And Vulnerable About Them As If They Thanked You For Admiring Them.

Yes I Try To Kill Myself In Small Amounts, An Innocuous Occupation. Actually I'm Hung Up On It.

Frog Has No Nerves. Frog Is As Old As A Cockroach. Frog Is My Father's Genitals. Frog Is A Malformed Doorknob. Frog Is A Soft Bag Of Green.

It Is In The Small Things We See It. The Child's First Step, As Awesome As An Earthquake. The First Time You Rode A Bike, Wallowing Up The Sidewalk.

Take A Woman Talking, Purging Herself With Rhymes, Drumming Words Out Like A Typewriter, Planting Words In You Like Grass Seed. You'll Move Off.

I Am In My Own Mind. I Am Locked In The Wrong House.

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