Anne Sexton Poems

A young man is afraid of his demon and puts his hand
over the demon's mouth sometimes...- D. H. Lawrence

I mentioned my demon to a friend
...

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-
...

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

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

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

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

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.
...

A thousand doors ago
when I was a lonely kid
in a big house with four
garages and it was summer
...