Anne Sexton Poems

They sit in a row
outside the kindergarten,
black, red, brown, all
with those brass buckles.
...

It is snowing and death bugs me
as stubborn as insomnia.
The fierce bubbles of chalk,
the little white lesions
...

My business is words. Words are like labels,
or coins, or better, like swarming bees.
I confess I am only broken by the sources of things;
...

1. Old Man

Old man, it's four flights up and for what?
Your room is hardly bigger than your bed.
...

Ms. Sexton went out looking for the gods.
She began looking in the sky
—expecting a large white angel with a blue crotch.
...

Linda, you are leaving
your old body now,
It lies flat, an old butterfly,
all arm, all leg, all wing,
...

It comes oozing
out of flowers at night,
it comes out of the rain
...

Notice how he has numbered the blue veins
in my breast. Moreover there are ten freckles.
Now he goes left. Now he goes right.
...

For months my hand was sealed off
in a tin box. Nothing was there but the subway railings.
Perhaps it is bruised, I thought,
...

Mother,
strange goddess face
above my milk home,
that delicate asylum,
...