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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.

-Anne Sexton

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We Do Not Explain

Anne Sexton

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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.

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

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

Today God Gives Milk / And I Have The Pail.

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

Bless All Useful Objects, The Spoons Made Of Bone, The Mattress I Cook My Dreams Upon, The Typewriter That Is My Church With An Altar Of Keys Always Waiting.

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

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.

I Am Alone Here In My Own Mind. There Is No Map And There Is No Road. It Is One Of A Kind Just As Yours Is.

Home Is My Bethlehem, My Succoring Shelter, My Mental Hospital, My Wife, My Dam, My Husband, My Sir, My Womb, My Skull.

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.

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.

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.

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

Once I Was A Couple. I Was My Own King And Queen With Cheese And Bread And Rosé On The Rocks Of Rockport.

If You Meet A Cross-eyed Person You Must Plunge Into The Grass, Alongside The Chilly Ants, Fish Through The Green Fingernails And Come Up With The Four-leaf Clover.

We Are America. We Are The Coffin Fillers. We Are The Grocers Of Death. We Pack Them In Crates Like Cauliflowers.

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

Poetry To Me Is Prayer.

Now, In My Middle Age, About Nineteen In The Head I'd Say, I Am Rowing, I Am Rowing.

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

Everyone In Me Is A Bird I Am Beating All My Wings

Images Are Probably The Most Important Part Of The Poem. First Of All You Want To Tell A Story, But Images Are What Are Going To Shore It Up And Get To The Heart Of The Matter.

Today Life Opened Inside Me Like An Egg.

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!

God Is Only Mocked By Believers.

...became A Woman Who Learned Her Own Skin And Dug Into Her Soul And Found It Full.

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

I Did Not Know The Woman I Would Be Nor That Blood Would Bloom In Me Each Month Like An Exotic Flower, Nor That Children, Two Monuments, Would Break From Between My Legs.

And What Of The Dead? They Lie Without Shoes In The Stone Boats. They Are More Like Stone Than The Sea Would Be If It Stopped. They Refuse To Be Blessed, Throat, Eye And Knucklebone.

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

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

Take Your Foot Out Of The Graveyard, They Are Busy Being Dead.

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

Even Without Wars, Life Is Dangerous.

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

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.

The Soul Was Not Cured, It Was As Full As A Clothes Closet Of Dresses That Did Not Fit.

Oh Thumb, I Want A Drink It Is Dark, Where Are The Big People, When Will I Get There...?

Take Adultery Or Theft. Merely Sins. It Is Evil Who Dines On The Soul, Stretching Out Its Long Bone Tongue. It Is Evil Who Tweezers My Heart, Picking Out Its Atomic Worms.

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.

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

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.

My Heart Is On A Budget. It Keeps Me On The Brink.

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.

I Would Like To Think That No One Would Die Anymore If We All Believed In Daisies But The Worms Know Better, Don't They? They Slide Into The Ear Of A Corpse And Listen To His Great Sigh.

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.

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

True. There Is A Beautiful Jesus. He Is Frozen To His Bones Like A Chunk Of Beef. How Desperately He Wanted To Pull His Arms In! How Desperately I Touch His Vertical And Horizontal Axes! But I Can't. Need Is Not Quite Belief.

It's A Little Mad, But I Believe I Am Many People. When I Am Writing A Poem, I Feel I Am The Person Who Should Have Written It.

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

Telling The Truth

Emerald As Heavy As A Golf Course, Ruby As Dark As An Afterbirth, Diamond As White As Sun On The Sea.

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

All I Wanted Was A Little Piece Of Life, To Be Married, To Have Children.... I Was Trying My Damnedest To Lead A Conventional Life, For That Was How I Was Brought Up, And It Was What My Husband Wanted Of Me. But One Can't Build Little White Picket Fences To Keep The Nightmares Out.

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

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.

My Faith Is A Great Weight Hung On A Small Wire, As Doth The Spider Hang Her Baby On A Thin Web.

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.

Abundance Is Scooped From Abundance Yet Abundance Remains.

Images Are The Heart Of Poetry ... You're Not A Poet Without Imagery.

God Owns Heaven But He Craves The Earth.

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

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.

For Forty Days, For Forty Nights Jesus Put One Foot In Front Of The Other And The Man He Carried, If It Was A Man, Became Heavier And Heavier.

God Went Out Of Me As If The Sea Dried Up Like Sandpaper, As If The Sun Became A Latrine. God Went Out Of My Fingers. They Became Stone. My Body Became A Side Of Mutton And Despair Roamed The Slaughterhouse.

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.

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.

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

It Doesn't Matter Who My Father Was; It Matters Who I Remember He Was.

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

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

I Want To Kiss God On His Nose And Watch Him Sneeze And So Do You. Not Out Of Disrespect. Out Of Pique. Out Of A Man-to-man Thing.

Our Eyes Are Full Of Terrible Confessions.

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

You Who Have Inhabited Me In The Deepest And Most Broken Place, Are Going, Going

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

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

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

The Body Is A Damn Hard Thing To Kill.

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

Sorrow Is Easier Than Guilt.

The Place I Live In Is A Kind Of Maze And I Keep Seeking The Exit Or The Home.

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.

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.

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

Dead Drunk Is The Term I Think Of, Insensible, Neither Cool Nor Warm, Without A Head Or A Foot. To Be Drunk Is To Be Intimate With A Fool.

I Can Only Sign Over Everything, The House, The Dog, The Ladders, The Jewels, The Soul, The Family Tree, The Mailbox. Then I Can Sleep. Maybe.

My Mouth Blooms Like A Cut.

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

Every Time I Get Happy The Nana-hex Comes Through. Birds Turn Into Plumber's Tools, A Sonnet Turns Into A Dirty Joke, A Wind Turns Into A Tracheotomy, A Boat Turns Into A Corpse.

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

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

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

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.

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

Blue Eyes Wash Off Sometimes.

All I Am Is The Trick Of Words Writing Themselves.

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

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.

O Starry Night, This Is How I Want To Die

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

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.

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

When I Lie Down To Love, Old Dwarf Heart Shakes Her Head. Like An Imbecile She Was Born Old.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I Am A Collection Of Dismantled Almosts.

... A Starving Man Doesn't Ask What The Meal Is.

I Put The Gold Star Up In The Front Window Beside The Flag. Alterations Is What I Know And What I Did: Hems, Gussets And Seams.

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.

There Once Was A Miller With A Daughter As Lovely As A Grape. He Told The King That She Could Spin Gold Out Of Common Straw. The King Summoned The Girl And Locked Her In A Room Full Of Straw And Told Her To Spin It Into Gold Or She Would Die Like A Criminal. Poor Grape With No One To Pick. Luscious And Round And Sleek. Poor Thing. To Die And Never See Brooklyn. (rumpelstiltskin)

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.

One Of My Secret Instructions To Myself As A Poet Is "whatever You Do, Don't Be Boring."

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

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

It's All A Matter Of History. Brandy Is No Solace. Librium Only Lies Me Down Like A Dead Snow Queen. Yes! I Am Still The Criminal.

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

I Am Teaching... This Year It's Kind Of Like Having A Love Affair With A Rhinoceros.

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

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.

I Grow Old On My Bitterness.

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.

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

If The Doctors Cure Then The Sun Sees It. If The Doctors Kill Then The Earth Hides It. The Doctors Should Fear Arrogance More Than Cardiac Arrest.

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

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

I Would Like A Simple Life / Yet All Night I Am Laying / Poems Away In A Long Box.

I Imitatea Memory Of Beliefthat I Do Not Own.

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.

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

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.

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'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.

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.

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

The Snow Has Quietness In It; No Songs, No Smells, No Shouts Or Traffic. When I Speak My Own Voice Shocks Me.

I Love The Word Warm. It Is Almost Unbearable-- So Moist And Breathlike.

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

When They Turn The Sun On Again I'll Plant Children Under It, I'll Light Up My Soul With A Match And Let It Sing.

Craft Is A Trick You Make Up To Let You Write The Poem.

To Die Whole, Riddled With Nothing But Desire For It, Is Like Breakfast After Love.

Death, I Need My Little Addiction To You. I Need That Tiny Voice Who, Even As I Rise From The Sea, All Woman, All There, Says Kill Me, Kill Me.

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.

Those Moments Before A Poem Comes, When The Heightened Awareness Comes Over You, And You Realize A Poem Is Buried There Somewhere, You Prepare Yourself. I Run Around, You Know, Kind Of Skipping Around The House, Marvelous Elation. It’s As Though I Could Fly.

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.

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

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

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.

All Who Love Have Lied.

Evil Is Maybe Lying To God. Or Better, Lying To Love.

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.

Somebody Who Should Have Been Born Is Gone.

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

Though Rain Curses The Window Let The Poem Be Made.

Psychiatry Is A Dirty Mirror.

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

All The Oxygen Of The World Was In Them. All The Feet Of The Babies Of The World Were In Them. All The Crotches Of The Angels Of The World Were In Them. All The Morning Kisses Of Philadelphia Were In Them.

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.

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.

What's The Point Of Fighting The Dollars When All You Need Is A Warm Bed? When The Dog Barks You Let Him In. All We Need Is Someone To Let Us In. And One Other Thing: To Consider The Lilies In The Field.

I Have A Black Look I Do Not Like. It Is A Mask I Try On. I Migrate Toward It And Its Frog Sits On My Lips And Defecates.

[i] Have Fantasies Of Killing Myself And Thus Being The Powerful One Not The Powerless One.

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

And Thus Snow White Became The Prince's Bride. The Wicked Queen Was Invited To The Wedding Feast And When She Arrived There Were Red-hot Iron Shoes, In The Manner Of Red-hot Roller Skates, Clamped Upon Her Feet.

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

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

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.

Why Are All These Dolls Falling Out Of The Sky? Was There A Father? Or Have The Planets Cut Holes In Their Nets And Let Our Childhood Out, Or Are We The Dolls Themselves, Born But Never Fed?

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

Maybe, Although My Heart Is A Kitten Of Butter, I Am Blowing It Up Like A Zeppelin.

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

Put Your Mouthful Of Words Away And Come With Me To Watch The Lilies Open In Such A Field, Growing There Like Yachts, Slowly Steering Their Petals Without Nurses Or Clocks.

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

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

Jesus Saw The Multitudes Were Hungry And He Said, Oh Lord, Send Down A Short-order Cook.

Then All This Became History. Your Hand Found Mine. Life Rushed To My Fingers Like A Blood Clot. Oh, My Carpenter, The Fingers Are Rebuilt. They Dance With Yours.

Poets Are Sitting In My Kitchen. Why Do These Poets Lie? Why Do Children Get Children And Did You Hear What It Said?

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.

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.

We Are All Writing God's Poem.

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

Well, One Gets Out Of Bed And The Planets Don't Always Hiss Or Muck Up The Day, Each Day.

Suicide Is, After All, The Opposite Of The Poem.

Yet Love Enters My Blood Like An I.v., Dripping In Its Little White Moments.

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.

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

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

All In All, I'd Say, The World Is Strangling.

It Was As If A Morning-glory Had Bloomed In Her Throat, And All That Blue And Small Pollen Ate Into My Heart, Violent And Religious

I Am Not Lazy. I Am On The Amphetamine Of The Soul. I Am, Each Day, Typing Out The God My Typewriter Believes In.

Oh, Darling, Let Your Body In, Let It Tie You In, In Comfort.

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

Only My Books Anoint Me, And A Few Friends, Those Who Reach Into My Veins.

Now I Am Going Back And I Have Ripped My Hand From Your Hand As I Said I Would And I Have Made It This Far.

I Am Younger Each Year At The First Snow.

I’m Lost. And It’s My Own Fault. It’s About Time I Figured Out That I Can’t Ask People To Keep Me Found.

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.

Poor Thing. To Die And Never See Brooklyn.

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.

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