When Man Enters Woman, by Anne Sexton

Anne Sexton

When Man Enters Woman

When man,

enters woman,

like the surf biting the shore,

again and again,

and the woman opens her mouth with pleasure

and her teeth gleam

like the alphabet,

Logos appears milking a star,

and the man

inside of woman

ties a knot

so that they will

never again be separate

and the woman

climbs into a flower

and swallows its stem

and Logos appears

and unleashes their rivers.

This man,

this woman

with their double hunger,

have tried to reach through

the curtain of God

and briefly they have,

though God

in His perversity

unties the knot.

#Americans #Suicide #Women

Enjoyed this read? Treat us to a coffee!.
Your help allows us to exist.

Liked or faved by...

Other works by Anne Sexton...

The Fury of Jewels and Coal

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

The Operation

After the sweet promise, the summer’s mild retreat from mother’s cancer, the winter m… I come to this white office, its s… its hard tablet, its stirrups, to…

The Fury of Flowers and Worms

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.

The Angel Food Dogs

Leaping, leaping, leaping, down line by line, growling at the cadavers, filling the holy jugs with their p… falling into windows and mauling t…

Elizabeth Gone

You lay in the nest of your real d… Beyond the print of my nervous fin… Where they touched your moving hea… Your old skin puckering, your lung… Grown baby short as you looked up…

Words

Be careful of words, even the miraculous ones. For the miraculous we do our best, sometimes they swarm like insects and leave not a sting but a kiss.

The Big Heart

Big heart, wide as a watermelon, but wise as birth, there is so much abundance in the people I have:

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.

The Civil War

I am torn in two but I will conquer myself. I will dig up the pride. I will take scissors and cut out the beggar.

The Double Image

I am thirty this November. You are still small, in your fourt… We stand watching the yellow leave… flapping in the winter rain, falling flat and washed. And I re…

Old Dwarf Heart

True. All too true. I have never… life. All my decay has taken place… Henderson the Rain King, by Saul… When I lie down to love, old dwarf heart shakes her head.

Doctors

They work with herbs and penicillin They work with gentleness and the scalpel. They dig out the cancer,

Clothes

Put on a clean shirt before you die, some Russian said. Nothing with drool, please, no egg spots, no blood, no sweat, no sperm.

The Black Art

A woman who writes feels too much, those trances and portents! As if cycles and children and isla… weren’t enough; as if mourners and… and vegetables were never enough.

The Death Baby

1. DREAMS I was an ice baby. I turned to sky blue. My tears became two glass beads. My mouth stiffened into a dumb how…

Anne Sexton