impressions

"I'm out of repair 

but you are tall in your battle dress 

and I must arrange for your journey. 

I was always a virgin, 

old and pitted." 

 

Text by, (Anne Sexton (1928-1974), U.S. poet. "Moon Song, Woman Song.") 

she was only a fraud

hiding behind her many devices
and
quite witchy after all


it's an unattractive trait this self loathing
one that should not
be put on
others
this much I know

Her Kind

"have gone out, a possessed witch,

haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind."

Anne Sexton

Photography by Deborah Turbeville.