after Anne Sexton
sometimes in her difficult snow, sometimes asylum
and the blank hole of light sitting outside its city
window bars, through which yards, trees like
clumps of my hair, as I write this, cinder and shift
over lawn. What we never asked then, is which ease
rested in her absurd whiteness, the nervosa visible
through black blinds and inner screens, the neighborhood
scuttling, nosy sure but also like lovers
vicarious through her thorough delirium, empathic
wards of the cliff that ends the stage she drops
and deepens. In winter, the brats in waiting rooms.
In summer, the back and cloak chatter ghosting
the threat of snatched children or other general
grip for which she (polar) stretched taut. Hallways
hover beyond those bolted rooms. So the shock isn’t
white children who become less wet and coiled steam
around her curl up individually, like toes,
until he’s gone. Guards lie. take up
your medicines, keep out the priests and children, grown.
The shutting when dark gets in and snakes announce
its water breaking, its midnight, its slippery canal.
I am shoveling the children out, in person smacking
the black birthmark, hunched like little brooms
that take the animated stairs. It’s magic, what
comes in the dark, on both knees, with many
straps, scoop after scoop. Maybe night,
with less bits for the mouth, with less antagonism
for how fat the fat stays, even given
the daughter out. Maybe my skull is too crowded
and the holes are pickaxe stars, and the man who
is supposed to be, holes in his arms and all,
water, and it has no opening through which I can
come out, which, leaking after the birth, thickens
to an infected cake. Dawn, a murmuration
flies together, even all alone who am I
to say I’m good enough to feed it soup?
