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One can't build little white picket fences to keep nightmares out.

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
Nightmares
Fence
Nightmare
Build
White
Keep
Littles
Picket
Little
Fences

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Once upon a time we were all born, popped out like jelly rolls forgetting our fishdom, the pleasuring seas, the country of comfort, spanked into the oxygens of death.
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It was as if a morning-glory had bloomed in her throat, and all that blue and small pollen ate into my heart, violent and religious
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Let the light be called Day so that men may grow corn or take busses.
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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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If the doctors cure then the sun sees it. If the doctors kill then the earth hides it. The doctors should fear arrogance more than cardiac arrest.
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The soul was not cured, it was as full as a clothes closet of dresses that did not fit.
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So I won't hang around in my hospital shift, repeating The Black Mass and all of it. I say Live, Live because of the sun, the dream, the excitable gift.
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It's all a matter of history. Brandy is no solace. Librium only lies me down like a dead snow queen. Yes! I am still the criminal.
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Craft is a trick you make up to let you write the poem.
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I will be steel! I will build a steel bridge over my need! I will build a bomb shelter over my heart! But my future is a secret. It is as shy as a mole.
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The Saints come, as human as a mouth, with a bag of God in their backs, like a hunchback, they come, they come marching in.
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But even in a telephone booth evil can seep out of the receiver and we must cover it with a mattress, and then tear it from its roots and bury it, bury it.
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Earth, earthriding your merry-go-roundtoward extinction,right to the rootsthickening the oceans like gravy,festering in your caves,you are becoming a latrine.
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Cinderella and the prince lived, they say, happily ever after, like two dolls in a museum case never bothered by diapers or dust, never arguing over the timing of an egg, never telling the same story twice.
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I like you your eyes are full of language. [Letter to Anne Clarke, July 3, 1964.]
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I suffer for birds and fireflies but not frogs, she said, and threw him across the room. Kaboom! Like a genie out of a samovar, a handsome prince arose in the corner of the bedroom.
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What's missing is the eyeballs in each of us, but it doesn't matter because you've got the bucks, the bucks, the bucks.
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I am torn in two but I will conquer myself.
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Give me your skin as sheer as a cobweb, let me open it up and listen in and scoop out the dark.
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I am your dwarf. I am the enemy within. I am the boss of your dreams. See. Your hand shakes. It is not palsy or booze. It is your Doppelganger trying to get out. Beware...Beware...
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