literature

heartbeats

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sunshinegypsy's avatar
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Literature Text

my fingerprints are on the inside of your thighs,
Acqua di Gio and sweat,

a love letter under your shoulder blade,
you are reading a poem

like Anne on a boat somewhere, holding
Maxine's hands, saying the wrong words over
and over again

shivering in a bath,
I cannot die because
I once told you forever

even when my fever goes up and
my heart has forgotten how to beat and I think
about that, how a body turns itself inside out and
it all comes down to a broken heart.
Love.

On October 4, 1974, Anne Sexton had lunch with poet Maxine Kumin to revise galleys for Sexton's manuscript of The Awful Rowing Toward God, scheduled for publication in March 1975. On returning home she put on her mother's old fur coat, removed all her rings, poured herself a glass of vodka, locked herself in her garage, and started the engine of her car, committing suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning.

In an interview over a year before her death, she explained she had written the first drafts of The Awful Rowing Toward God in twenty days with "two days out for despair and three days out in a mental hospital." She went on to say that she would not allow the poems to be published before her death.


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