Anne Sexton Poems

A woman who writes feels too much,
those trances and portents!
As if cycles and children and islands
weren't enough; as if mourners and gossips
...

Surely I will be disquieted
by the hospital, that body zone-
...

No matter what life you lead
the virgin is a lovely number:
cheeks as fragile as cigarette paper,
arms and legs made of Limoges,
...

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

His awful skin
stretched out by some tradesman
is like my skin, here between my fingers,
a kind of webbing, a kind of frog.
...

Some ghosts are women,
neither abstract nor pale,
their breasts as limp as killed fish.
...

Roach, foulest of creatures,
who attacks with yellow teeth
and an army of cousins big as shoes,
you are lumps of coal that are mechanized
...

Something
cold is in the air,
an aura of ice
and phlegm.
...

It is not a turtle
hiding in its little green shell.
It is not a stone
...

By the first of August
the invisible beetles began
to snore and the grass was
as tough as hemp and was
...