"Her Kind"

Teaching poetry to high school kids all year has distracted me from the fact that I love it. So, this year I have decided to memorize at least a poem a month. The following is one of my favorite poems by Anne Sexton, which I memorized during the month of November last year. November also happened to be my wedding month and I think I scared Mike a little bit with my love for the "possessed witch" imagery. But in all fairness, he did deserve to know what he was getting in to beforehand.

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 the 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.