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Anne Sexton Short Poems

Famous Short Anne Sexton Poems. Short poetry by famous poet Anne Sexton. A collection of the all-time best Anne Sexton short poems


by Anne Sexton
 The rain drums down like red ants, 
each bouncing off my window.
The ants are in great pain and they cry out as they hit as if their little legs were only stitche don and their heads pasted.
And oh they bring to mind the grave, so humble, so willing to be beat upon with its awful lettering and the body lying underneath without an umbrella.
Depression is boring, I think and I would do better to make some soup and light up the cave.



by Anne Sexton
 You are the roast beef I have purchased
and I stuff you with my very own onion.
You are a boat I have rented by the hour and I steer you with my rage until you run aground.
You are a glass that I have paid to shatter and I swallow the pieces down with my spit.
You are the grate I warm my trembling hands on, searing the flesh until it's nice and juicy.
You stink like my Mama under your bra and I vomit into your hand like a jackpot its cold hard quarters.

by Anne Sexton
 Not that it was beautiful,
but that, in the end, there was
a certain sense of order there;
something worth learning
in that narrow diary of my mind,
in the commonplaces of the asylum
where the cracked mirror
or my own selfish death
outstared me .
.
.
I tapped my own head; it was glass, an inverted bowl.
It's small thing to rage inside your own bowl.
At first it was private.
Then it was more than myself.

by Anne Sexton
 We are America.
We are the coffin fillers.
We are the grocers of death.
We pack them in crates like cauliflowers.
The bomb opens like a shoebox.
And the child? The child is certainly not yawning.
And the woman? The woman is bathing her heart.
It has been torn out of her and as a last act she is rinsing it off in the river.
This is the death market.
America, where are your credentials?

by Anne Sexton
 Some women marry houses.
It's another kind of skin; it has a heart, a mouth, a liver and bowel movements.
The walls are permanent and pink.
See how she sits on her knees all day, faithfully washing herself down.
Men enter by force, drawn back like Jonah into their fleshy mothers.
A woman is her mother.
That's the main thing.



by Anne Sexton
 Something 
cold is in the air, 
an aura of ice 
and phlegm.
All day I've built a lifetime and now the sun sinks to undo it.
The horizon bleeds and sucks its thumb.
The little red thumb goes out of sight.
And I wonder about this lifetime with myself, this dream I'm living.
I could eat the sky like an apple but I'd rather ask the first star: why am I here? why do I live in this house? who's responsible? eh?

by Anne Sexton
 Busy, with an idea for a code, I write
signals hurrying from left to right,
or right to left, by obscure routes,
for my own reasons; taking a word like writes
down tiers of tries until its secret rites
make sense; or until, suddenly, RATS
can amazingly and funnily become STAR
and right to left that small star
is mine, for my own liking, to stare
its five lucky pins inside out, to store
forever kindly, as if it were a star
I touched and a miracle I really wrote.

by Anne Sexton
 Coon, why did you come to this dance
with a mask on? Why not the tin man
and his rainbow girl? Why not Racine,
his hair marcelled down to his chest?
Why not come as a stomach digesting
its worms? Why you little fellow
with your ears at attention and your
nose poking up like a microphone?
You whig emblem, you woman chaser,
who do you dance over the wide lawn tonight
clanging the garbage pail like great silver bells?

by Anne Sexton
 Many a miner has gone 
into the deep pit 
to receive the dust of a kiss, 
an ore-cell.
He has gone with his lamp full of mole eyes deep deep and has brought forth Jesus at Gethsemane.
Body of moss, body of glass, body of peat, how sharp you lie, emerald as heavy as a golf course, ruby as dark as an afterbirth, diamond as white as sun on the sea, coal, dark mother, brood mother, let the sea birds bring you into our lives as from a distant island, heavy as death.

by Anne Sexton
 The summer sun ray
shifts through a suspicious tree.
though I walk through the valley of the shadow It sucks the air and looks around for me.
The grass speaks.
I hear green chanting all day.
I will fear no evil, fear no evil The blades extend and reach my way.
The sky breaks.
It sags and breathes upon my face.
In the presence of mine enemies, mine enemies The world is full of enemies.
There is no safe place.

by Anne Sexton
 Husband,
last night I dreamt
they cut off your hands and feet.
Husband, you whispered to me, Now we are both incomplete.
Husband, I held all four in my arms like sons and daughters.
Husband, I bent slowly down and washed them in magical waters.
Husband, I placed each one where it belonged on you.
"A miracle," you said and we laughed the laugh of the well-to-do.

by Anne Sexton
 Being kissed on the back 
of the knee is a moth 
at the windowscreen and 
yes my darling a dot 
on the fathometer is 
tinkerbelle with her cough 
and twice I will give up my 
honor and stars will stick 
like tacks in the night 
yes oh yes yes yes two 
little snails at the back 
of the knee building bon- 
fires something like eye- 
lashes something two zippos 
striking yes yes yes small 
and me maker.

by Anne Sexton
 One day He
tipped His top hat
and walked
out of the room,
ending the arguement.
He stomped off saying: I don't give guarentees.
I was left quite alone using up the darkenss.
I rolled up my sweater, up into a ball, and took it to bed with me, a kind of stand-in for God, what washerwoman who walks out when you're clean but not ironed.
When I woke up the sweater had turned to bricks of gold.
I'd won the world but like a forsaken explorer, I'd lost my map.

Book: Reflection on the Important Things