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Anne Sexton

Anne Sexton

Anna Who Was Mad

Anna who was mad,
I have a knife in my armpit.
When I stand on tiptoe I tap out messages.
Am I some sort of infection?
Did I make you go insane?
Did I make the sounds go sour?
Did I tell you to climb out the window?
Forgive. Forgive.
Say not I did.
Say not.
Say.
 
Speak Mary—words into our pillow.
Take me the gangling twelve—year—old
into your sunken lap.
Whisper like a buttercup.
Eat me. Eat me up like cream pudding.
Take me in.
Take me.
Take.
 
Give me a report on the condition of my soul.
Give me a complete statement of my actions.
Hand me a jack—in—the—pulpit and let me listen in.
Put me in the stirrups and bring a tour group through.
Number my sins on the grocery list and let me buy.
Did I make you go insane?
Did I turn up your earphone and let a siren drive through?
Did I open the door for the mustached psychiatrist
who dragged you out like a gold cart?
Did I make you go insane?
From the grave write me, Anna!
You are nothing but ashes but nevertheless
pick up the Parker Pen I gave you.
Write me.
Write.

Altre opere di Anne Sexton...
In Memoriam

What’s missing is the eyeballs in each of us, but it doesn’t matt… because you’ve got the bucks, the… You let me touch them, fondle the… lick at their numbers and it lets…
For the Year of the Insane

O Mary, fragile mother, hear me, hear me now although I do not know your words. The black rosary with its silver… lies unblessed in my hand
 1
Lessons in Hunger

‘Do you like me?’ I asked the blue blazer. No answer. Silence bounced out of his books. Silence fell off his tongue
The Truth the Dead Know

Gone, I say and walk from church, refusing the stiff procession to t… letting the dead ride alone in the… It is June. I am tired of being b… We drive to the Cape. I cultivate
 1
The Frog Prince

Frau Doktor, Mama Brundig, take out your contacts, remove your wig. I write for you.
Rapunzel

A woman who loves a woman is forever young. The mentor and the student
 1
The woman with the edge, by Pablo Picasso
Her Kind

I have gone out, a possessed witch… haunting the black air, braver at… dreaming evil, I have done my hitc… over the plain houses, light by li… lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out…
 3
Where It Was at Back Then

Husband, last night I dreamt they cut off your hands and feet. Husband, you whispered to me,
The Big Boots of Pain

There can be certain potions needled in the clock for the body’s fall from grace, to untorture and to plead for. These I have known
The Artist's Wife and His Setter Dog, by Thomas Eakins
For my Lover, Returning to His Wife

She is all there. She was melted carefully down for… and cast up from your childhood, cast up from your one hundred favo… She has always been there, my darl…
 1
The Play

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.
Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty)

Consider a girl who keeps slipping off, arms limp as old carrots, into the hypnotist’s trance, into a spirit world
In Celebration of my Uterus

Everyone in me is a bird. I am beating all my wings. They wanted to cut you out but they will not. They said you were immeasurably em…
Red Roses

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.
 1
Noon Walk on the Asylum Lawn

The summer sun ray shifts through a suspicious tree. though I walk through the valley o… It sucks the air and looks around for me.



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