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We talked death with burned-up intensity, both of us drawn to it like moths to an electric light bulb. Sucking on it!

Anne Sexton

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Anne Sexton
Age: 45 †
Born: 1928
Born: November 9
Died: 1974
Died: October 4
Poet
Writer
Newton
Massachusetts
Anne Gray Harvey
Intensity
Drawn
Bulb
Death
Sucking
Light
Moths
Like
Bulbs
Electric
Burned
Talked

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This is what poems are: with mercy for the greedy, they are the tongue's wrangle, the world's pottage, the rat's star.
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Today is made of yesterday, each time I steal toward rites I do not know, waiting for the lost ingredient, as if salt or money or even lust would keep us calm and prove us whole at last.
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it was my first doll that water went into and water came out of much earlier it was the diaper I wore and the dirt thereof and my mother hating me for it
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I did not know the woman I would be nor that blood would bloom in me each month like an exotic flower, nor that children, two monuments, would break from between my legs.
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Now I am going back And I have ripped my hand From your hand as I said I would And I have made it this far.
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It's a little mad, but I believe I am many people. When I am writing a poem, I feel I am the person who should have written it.
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The day of fire is coming, the thrush will fly ablaze like a little sky rocket.
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All the oxygen of the world was in them. All the feet of the babies of the world were in them. All the crotches of the angels of the world were in them. All the morning kisses of Philadelphia were in them.
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I'm the crazy one who thinks that words reach people.
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Frog has no nerves. Frog is as old as a cockroach. Frog is my father's genitals. Frog is a malformed doorknob. Frog is a soft bag of green.
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