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1 " Give me your skin as sheer as a cobweb, let me open it up and listen in and scoop out the dark. "
― Anne Sexton , Transformations
2 " Quite collected at cocktail parties,meanwhile in my headI'm undergoing open-heart surgery. "
3 " Each night I am nailed into placeand forget who I am.Daddy? That's another kind of prison.It's not the prince at all, but my fatherdrunkeningly bends over my bed, circling the abyss like a shark, my father thick upon melike some sleeping jellyfish.What voyage is this, little girl? This coming out of prison? God help -this life after death? "
4 " And I. I too.Quite collected at cocktail parties,meanwhile in my headI'm undergoing open-heart surgery. "
5 " Death, with one-eyed jack in his hand,makes a promise to the thirteenth child. "
6 " It is not enough to read Hesseand drink clam chowder,we must have the answers. "
7 " This one day her mother gave hera basket of wine and caketo take to her grandmotherbecause she was ill.Wine and cake?Where's the aspirin? The penicillin?Where's the fruit juice?Peter Rabbit got camomile tea.But wine and cake it was. "
8 " She married the princeand all went wellexcept for the fear —the fear of sleep.Briar Rosewas an insomniac...She could not napor lie in sleepwithout the court chemistmixing her some knock-out dropsand never in the prince's presence. "
9 " Considera girl who keeps slipping off, arms limp as old carrots, into the hypnotist's trance, into a spirit worldspeaking with the gift of tongues. "
10 " If someone burns out your eyeI will take your socketand use it for an ashtray. "
11 " There once was a millerwith a daughter as lovely as a grape.He told the king that she couldspin gold out of common straw.The king summoned the girland locked her in a room full of strawand told her to spin it into goldor she would die like a criminal.Poor grape with no one to pick.Luscious and round and sleek.Poor thing.To die and never see Brooklyn.(Rumpelstiltskin) "
12 " I suffer for birds and firefliesbut 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. "
13 " And then I knew that the voiceof the spirits had been let in--as intense as an epileptic aura--and that no longer would I singalone. "
14 " the drunken poet (a genuis by daylight) "
15 " And so she danced until she was dead, a subterranean figure, her tongue flicking in and out like a gas jet. "
16 " I grew,and then there were many strange apparitions,the nagging rain, the sun turning into poisonand all of that. "
17 " It was ordained. Just as the fates deal out the plague with a tarot card. Just as the Supreme Being drills holes in our skulls to let the Boston Symphony through. "
18 " Even in the pink crib the somehow deficient, the somehow maimed, are thought to have a special pipeline to the mystical, the faint smell of the occult, a large ear on the God-horn. "
19 " and only as she dreamt of the yellow hair did moonlight sift into her mouth. "
20 " 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. "