Anne Sexton Poems

My doctor, the comedian
I called you every time
and made you laugh yourself
when I wrote this silly rhyme...
...

Over stone walls and barns,
miles from the black-eyed Susans,
over circus tents and moon rockets
...

I am the love killer,
I am murdering the music we thought so special,
that blazed between us, over and over.
...

for Sylvia Plath

O Sylvia, Sylvia,
with a dead box of stones and spoons,
...

Everyone in me is a bird.
I am beating all my wings.
They wanted to cut you out
but they will not.
...

I stand before the sea
and it rolls and rolls in its green blood
saying, 'Do not give up one god
for I have a handful.'
...

Better,
despite the worms talking to
the mare’s hoof in the field;
better,
...

We sail out of season into on oyster-gray wind,
over a terrible hardness.
Where Dickens crossed with mal de mer
in twenty weeks or twenty days
...

Sleepmonger,
deathmonger,
with capsules in my palms each night,
eight at a time from sweet pharmaceutical bottles
...

Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.
I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.
Then the almost unnameable lust returns.
...