Poem of the Month: October

The air is getting cooler, the days shorter and there is something spooky in the air out there. This month's poem is one that speaks of the wise women and witches of old, and how they live on in us.

Her Kind

by Anne Sexton

I 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 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.