Anne who was a mad

Anna who was mad, I have a knife in my armpit. When I stand on tiptoe I tap out messages. Am I some sort of infection? Did I make you go insane? Did I make the sounds go sour? Did I tell you to climb out the window? Forgive. Forgive. ay not I did. ay not. ay. peak !ary"words into our pillow. hold #ake me the gangling twelve"year"old into your sunken lap. Whisper like a buttercup. $at me. $at me up like cream pudding. #ake me in. #ake me. #ake. %ive me a report on the condition of my soul. %ive me a complete statement of my actions. &and me a 'ack"in"the"pulpit and let me listen in. (ut me in the stirrups and bring a tour group through. )umber my sins on the grocery list and let me buy. Did I make you go insane? Did I turn up your earphone and let a siren drive through? Did I open the door for the mustached psychiatrist who dragged you out like a gold cart? Did I make you go insane? From the grave write me, Anna* +ou are nothing but ashes but nevertheless pick up the (arker (en I gave you. Write me. Write.

Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty)

,onsider a girl who keeps slipping off, arms limp as old carrots, into the hypnotist-s trance, into a spirit world speaking with the gift of tongues. he is stuck in the time machine, suddenly two years old sucking her thumb, as inward as a snail, learning to talk again. he-s on a voyage. he is swimming further and further back, up like a salmon, struggling into her mother-s pocketbook. .ittle doll child, come here to (apa. it on my knee. I have kisses for the back of your neck. A penny for your thoughts, (rincess. I will hunt them like an emerald. ,ome be my snooky and I will give you a root. #hat kind of voyage, rank as a honeysuckle. /nce a king had a christening for his daughter 0riar 1ose and because he had only twelve gold plates he asked only twelve fairies to the grand event. #he thirteenth fairy, her fingers as long and thing as straws, her eyes burnt by cigarettes, her uterus an empty teacup, arrived with an evil gift. he made this prophecy2 #he princess shall prick herself

on a spinning wheel in her fifteenth year and then fall down dead. 3aputt* #he court fell silent. #he king looked like !unch-s Scream Fairies- prophecies, in times like those, held water. &owever the twelfth fairy had a certain kind of eraser and thus she mitigated the curse changing that death into a hundred"year sleep. #he king ordered every spinning wheel e4terminated and e4orcised. 0riar 1ose grew to be a goddess and each night the king bit the hem of her gown to keep her safe. &e fastened the moon up with a safety pin to give her perpetual light &e forced every male in the court to scour his tongue with 0ab"o lest they poison the air she dwelt in. #hus she dwelt in his odor. 1ank as honeysuckle. /n her fifteenth birthday she pricked her finger on a charred spinning wheel and the clocks stopped. +es indeed. he went to sleep. #he king and 5ueen went to sleep, the courtiers, the flies on the wall. #he fire in the hearth grew still and the roast meat stopped crackling. #he trees turned into metal and the dog became china.

#hey all lay in a trance, each a catatonic stuck in a time machine. $ven the frogs were 6ombies. /nly a bunch of briar roses grew forming a great wall of tacks around the castle. !any princes tried to get through the brambles for they had heard much of 0riar 1ose but they had not scoured their tongues so they were held by the thorns and thus were crucified. In due time a hundred years passed and a prince got through. #he briars parted as if for !oses and the prince found the tableau intact. &e kissed 0riar 1ose and she woke up crying2 Daddy* Daddy* (resto* he-s out of prison* he married the prince and all went well e4cept for the fear "" the fear of sleep. 0riar 1ose was an insomniac... he could not nap or lie in sleep without the court chemist mi4ing her some knock"out drops and never in the prince-s presence. If if is to come, she said, sleep must take me unawares while I am laughing or dancing so that I do not know that brutal place where I lie down with cattle prods, the hole in my cheek open.

Further, I must not dream for when I do I see the table set and a faltering crone at my place, her eyes burnt by cigarettes as she eats betrayal like a slice of meat. I must not sleep for while I-m asleep I-m ninety and think I-m dying. Death rattles in my throat like a marble. I wear tubes like earrings. I lie as still as a bar of iron. +ou can stick a needle through my kneecap and I won-t flinch. I-m all shot up with )ovocain. #his trance girl is yours to do with. +ou could lay her in a grave, an awful package, and shovel dirt on her face and she-d never call back2 &ello there* 0ut if you kissed her on the mouth her eyes would spring open and she-d call out2 Daddy* Daddy* (resto* he-s out of prison. #here was a theft. #hat much I am told. I was abandoned. #hat much I know. I was forced backward. I was forced forward. I was passed hand to hand like a bowl of fruit. $ach night I am nailed into place and forget who I am. Daddy? #hat-s another kind of prison.

It-s not the prince at all, but my father drunkeningly bends over my bed, circling the abyss like a shark, my father thick upon me like some sleeping 'ellyfish. What voyage is this, little girl? #his coming out of prison? %od help "" this life after death?

Cripples and other stories

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

Each time I give lectures or gather in the grants you send me off to boarding school in training pants. %od damn it, father"doctor, I-m really thirty"si4. I see dead rats in the toilet. I-m one of the lunatics. Disgusted, mother put me on the potty. he was good at this. !y father was fat on scotch. It leaked from every orifice. /h the enemas of childhood, reeking of outhouses and shame* +et you rock me in your arms and whisper my nickname. /r else you hold my hand

and teach me love too late. And that-s the hand of the arm they tried to amputate. #hough I was almost seven I was an awful brat. I put it in the $asy Wringer. It came out nice and flat. I was an instant cripple from my finger to my shoulder. #he laundress wept and swooned. !y mother had to hold her. I know I was a cripple. /f course, I-d known it from the start. !y father took the crowbar and broke the wringer-s heart. #he surgeons shook their heads. #hey really didn-t know"" Would the cripple inside of me be a cripple that would show? !y father was a perfect man, clean and rich and fat. !y mother was a brilliant thing. he was good at that. +ou hold me in your arms. &ow strange that you-re so tender* ,hild"woman that I am, you think that you can mend her. As for the arm, unfortunately it grew. #hough mother said a withered arm would put me in Who's Who. For years she has described it.

he sang it like a hymn. 0y then she loved the shrunken thing, my little withered limb. !y father-s cells clicked each night, intent on making money. And as for my cells, they brooded, little 5ueens, on honey. /h boys too, as a matter of fact, and cigarettes and cars. !other frowned at my wasted life. !y father smoked cigars. !y cheeks blossomed with maggots. I picked at them like pearls. I covered them with pancake. I wound my hair in curls. !y father didn-t know me but you kiss me in my fever. !y mother knew me twice and then I had to leave her. 0ut those are 'ust two stories and I have more to tell from the outhouse, the greenhouse where you draw me out of hell. Father, I am thirty"si4, yet I lie here in your crib. I-m getting born again, Adam, as you prod me with your rib.

Ballad of the lonely masturbator

The end of the affair is always death. She's my workshop. Slippery eye, out of the tribe of myself my breath finds you gone. I horrify those who stand by. I am fed. At night, alone, I marry the bed. Finger to finger, now she's mine.

She's not too far. She's my encounter. I beat her like a bell. I recline in the bower where you used to mount her. You borrowed me on the flowered spread. At night, alone, I marry the bed. Take for instance this night, my lo e, that e ery single couple puts together with a !oint o erturning, beneath, abo e, the abundant two on sponge and feather, kneeling and pushing, head to head. At night, alone, I marry the bed. I break out of my body this way, an annoying miracle. "ould I put the dream market on display# I am spread out. I crucify. $y little plum is what you said. At night, alone, I marry the bed. Then my black%eyed ri al came. The lady of water, rising on the beach, a piano at her fingertips, shame on her lips and a flute's speech. And I was the knock%kneed broom instead. At night, alone, I marry the bed. She took you the way a women takes a bargain dress off the rack and I broke the way a stone breaks. I gi e back your books and fishing tack. Today's paper says that you are wed. At night, alone, I marry the bed. The boys and girls are one tonight. They unbutton blouses. They un&ip flies. They take off shoes. They turn off the light. The glimmering creatures are full of lies. They are eating each other. They are o erfed.

At night, alone, I marry the bed.

Pain for a daughter

Blind with pain, she limps home! "he thoroughbred has stood on her foot (Anne Sexton) #e rested there like a building! Blind with love, my daughter #e grew into her foot until they were has cried nightly for horses, one those long necked marchers and "he marks of the horseshoe printed churners into her flesh, the tips of her toes that she has mastered, any and all, ripped off like pieces of leather, reining them in like a circus hand three toenails swirled like shells the excitable muscles and the ripe neck and left to float in blood in her riding boot tending, this summer, a pony and a foal Blind with fear, she sits on the toilet,

Pain for a Daughter

She who is s$ueamish to pull a thorn from the dog%s paw watched the pony blossom with distemper, the underside of the &aw swelling like an enormous grape, 'ritting her teeth with love, she drained the boil and scoured it with hydrogen peroxide until pus ran like milk on the barn floor Blind with loss all winter, in dungarees, a ski &acket, and a hard hat, she visits the neighbors% stables, our acreage not (oned for barns, they who own the flaming horses and the swan-necked thoroughbred that she tugs at and ca&oles, thinking it will burn like a furnace under her small-hipped )nglish seat

her foot balanced over the washbasin, her father, hydrogen peroxide in hand, performing the rites of the cleansing She bites on a towel, sucked in breath, sucked in and arched against the pain, her eyes glancing off me where * stand at the door, eyes locked on the ceiling, eyes of and stranger, And then she cries +h, -y god, #elp me, .here a child would have cried /-ama,/ .here a child would have believed /-ama,/ She bit the towel and called on 'od, And * saw her life, stretch out * saw her torn in childbirth, And * saw her, at that moment, in her own death, And * knew that she knew