Civil War Sextons

I couldn't get the image of him out of my head today. That's a lie. He popped up twice, like a night terror during waking hours. Memory's scythe on the train, too cool to act claustrophobic. It's not an image I want to carry around with me. It was first the boy on the train who wore a similar jacket and I thought, "How do I remember the jacket?" and then the speaker at the seminar after work who had some similar heritage, I thought, maybe some kind of Irish-American genetics that was paired with a maybe similar haircut. Most of it is all a fog. I say, I don't want to talk about it because I don't quite understand it and even if I did, God forbid I do something stupid and weak and have it define me. I can smell weakness on a person and it repulses me. I can't tell you what I do when I catch it in myself. Best to think, hey, you know, so far I've been pretty damn lucky. Continue to be so, all things considered.

And here is where we consult with the only friend that I think would understand, and the one I feel happy to see once I got home. My sister, the book I have bought over and over again and left on nightstands forever because the wretched especially need comforting. Here is your annual Sexton.

The Civil War
I am torn in two
but I will conquer myself.
I will dig up the pride.
I will find scissors
and cut out the beggar.
I will take a crowbar
and pry out the broken
pieces of God in me.
Just like a jigsaw puzzle,
I will put Him together again
with the patience of a chess player.

How many pieces?

It feels like thousands,
God dressed up like a whore
in a slime of green algae.
God dressed up like an old man
staggering out of His shoes.
God dressed up like a child,
all naked,
even without skin,
soft as an avocado when you peel it.
And others, others, others.

But I will conquer them all
and build a whole nation of God
in me — but united,
build a new soul,
dress it with skin
and then put on my shirt
and sing an anthem,
a song of myself.
—Anne Sexton

I saw an old coworker of mine last night at the Autechre show. She exclaimed, "I still have your Anne Sexton biography!" I lent it to her 5 years ago. All of my books, my little bastards, they are coming back to me.