Anne Sexton Poems

Big heart,
wide as a watermelon,
but wise as birth,
there is so much abundance
...

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.
...

Here,
in the room of my life
the objects keep changing.
Ashtrays to cry into,
...

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.
...