Sylvia Plath – Admonition

If you dissect a birdTo diagram the tongueYou'll cut the chordArticulating song.If you flay a beastTo marvel at the maneYou'll wreck the restFrom which the fur began.If you pluck out the heartTo find what makes it move,You'll halt the clockThat syncopates our lo...

Sylvia Plath – All The Dead Dears

Rigged poker -stiff on her backWith a granite grinThis antique museum-cased ladyLies, companioned by the gimcrackRelics of a mouse and a shrewThat battened for a day on her ankle-bone.These three, unmasked now, bearDry witnessTo the gross eating gameWe'd wink at if we didn't hearStars...

Sylvia Plath – Aquatic Nocturne

deep in liquidturquoise sliversof dilute lightquiver in thin streaksof bright tinfoilon mobile jet:pale flounderwaver bytilting silver:in the shallowsagile minnowsflicker gilt:grapeblue musselsdilate lithe andpliant valves:dull lunar globesof blubous jellyfishglow milkgreen:eels...

Sylvia Plath – Years

They enter as animals from the outerSpace of holly where spikesAre not thoughts I turn on, like a Yogi,But greenness, darkness so pureThey freeze and are.O God, I am not like youIn your vacuous black,Stars stuck all over, bright stupid confetti.Eternity bores me,I never wanted it.What...

Sylvia Plath – Who

The month of flowering's finished. The fruit's in,Eaten or rotten. I am all mouth.October's the month for storage.Thie shed's fusty as a mummy's stomach:Old tools, handles and rusty tusks.I am at home here among the dead heads.Let me sit in a flowerpot,The spiders won't notice.My...

Sylvia Plath – Whiteness I Remember

Whiteness being what I rememberAbout Sam: whiteness and the great runHe gave me. I've gone nowhere since butGoing's been tame deviation. White,Not of heraldic stallions: off-whiteOf the stable horse whose history'sHumdrum, unexceptionable, hisTried sobriety hiring him outTo novices...

Sylvia Plath – Mirror

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.Whatever I see I swallow immediatelyJust as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.I am not cruel, only truthful‚The eye of a little god, four-cornered.Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.It is pink, with speckles. I have...

Sylvia Plath – I Want, I Want

Open-mouthed, the baby godImmense, bald, though baby-headed,Cried out for the mother's dug.The dry volcanoes cracked and split,Sand abraded the milkless lip.Cried then for the father's bloodWho set wasp, wolf and shark to work,Engineered the gannet's beak.Dry-eyed, the inveterate...

Sylvia Plath – Apprehensions

There is this white wall, above which the sky creates itself-Infinite, green, utterly untouchable.Angels swim in it, and the stars, in indifference also.They are my medium.The sun dissolves on this wall, bleeding its lights.A grey wall now, clawed and bloody.Is there no way out...

Sylvia Plath – Insomniac

The night is only a sort of carbon paper,Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of starsLetting in the light, peephole after peephole . . .A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.Under the eyes of the stars and the moon's rictusHe suffers his desert pillow, sleeplessnessStretching...

Sylvia Plath – A Sorcerer Bids Farewell To Seem

I'm through with this grand looking-glass hotel where adjectives play croquet with flamingo nouns; methinks I shall absent me for a while from rhetoric of these rococo queens. Item : chuck out royal rigmarole of props and auction off each rare white-rabbit verb; send...

Sylvia Plath – Barren Woman

Empty, I echo to the least footfall,Museum without statues, grand with pillars, porticoes, rotundas.In my courtyard a fountain leaps and sinks back into itself,Nun-hearted and blind to the world. Marble liliesExhale their pallor like scent.I imagine myself with a great public,Mother...

Sylvia Plath – A Birthday Present

What is this, behind this veil, is it ugly, is it beautiful? It is shimmering, has it breasts, has it edges? I am sure it is unique, I am sure it is what I want. When I am quiet at my cooking I feel it looking, I feel it thinking 'Is this the one I am too appear for, Is...

Sylvia Plath – April Aubade

Worship this world of watercolor mood in glass pagodas hung with veils of green where diamonds jangle hymns within the blood and sap ascends the steeple of the vein. A saintly sparrow jargons madrigals to waken dreamers in the milky dawn, while tulips bow like a...