Anne Sexton

Red Riding Hood

Many are the deceivers:

The suburban matron,

proper in the supermarket,

list in hand so she won't suddenly fly,

buying her Duz and Chuck Wagon dog food,

meanwhile ascending from earth,

letting her stomach fill up with helium,

letting her arms go loose as kite tails,

getting ready to meet her lover

a mile down Apple Crest Road

in the Congregational Church parking lot.

Two seemingly respectable women

come up to an old Jenny

and show her an envelope

full of money

and promise to share the booty

if she'll give them ten thou

as an act of faith.

Her life savings are under the mattress

covered with rust stains

and counting.

They are as wrinkled as prunes

but negotiable.

The two women take the money and disappear.

Where is the moral?

Not all knives are for

stabbing the exposed belly.

Rock climbs on rock

and it only makes a seashore.

Old Jenny has lost her belief in mattresses

and now she has no wastebasket in which

to keep her youth.

The standup comic

on the "Tonight" show

who imitates the Vice President

and cracks up Johnny Carson

and delays sleep for millions

of bedfellows watching between their feet,

slits his wrist the next morning

in the Algonquin's old-fashioned bathroom,

the razor in his hand like a toothbrush,

wall as anonymous as a urinal,

the shower curtain his slack rubberman audience,

and then the slash

as simple as opening as a letter

and the warm blood breaking out like a rose

upon the bathtub with its claw and ball feet.

And I. I too.

Quite collected at cocktail parties,

meanwhile in my head

I'm undergoing open-heart surgery.

The heart, poor fellow,

pounding on his little tin drum

with a faint death beat,