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Yellow by Anne Sexton

By T.

22 January 2026

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Yellow
Anne Sexton

When they turn the sun
on again I’ll plant children
under it, I’ll light up my soul
with a match and let it sing. I’ll
take my bones and polish them, I’ll
vacuum up my stale hair, I’ll
pay all my neighbors’ bad debts, I’ll
write a poem called Yellow and put
my lips down to drink it up, I’ll
feed myself spoonfuls of heat and
everyone will be home playing with
their wings and the planet will
shudder with all those smiles and
there will be no poison anywhere, no plague
in the sky and there will be a mother-broth
for all of the people and we will
never die, not one of us, we’ll go on
won’t we?

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This poem appeared in Words for Dr. Y: Uncollected Poems by Anne Sexton, published by Houghton Mifflin, 1978. (Available on: Amazon • Bookshop)

DESCRIPTION

“Words For Dr. Y is the first collection of Anne Sexton’s poetry from which her editorial guidance was totally absent. Contains: 9 poems from 1971 – 1973; The Horoscope Poems: Scorpio, Bad Spider, and Die; Three Stories: The Ghost, Vampire, and The Bat (or To Remember, To Remember).” (Source)

ABOUT ANNE SEXTON

Anne Sexton was born in Newton, Massachusetts and raised in Weston, Massachusetts. One of the most popular poets of mid-20th century America, Sexton’s impressive body of work continues to be widely read and debated by literary scholars and cultural critics alike. Sexton’s books after To Bedlam and Part Way Back included All my Pretty Ones (1962), Live or Die (1966), which won the Pulitzer Prize, Love Poems (1969), the play Mercy Street (1969). Transformations (1972), a series… (more)