"my ribs crack where your wheels wind" (19)
Although this may be a sexual reference, i think the main allusion is to the early torturing device known as the rack. On the rack, a peron's arms and legs were stretched out and then pulled by a wheel resulting in either broken or dislocated bones.
Anne Sexton - Line 19 of Her Kind
2006-02-05
Added by: Rhonda
to me the entire third stanze speaks to Anne's guilty and depression due to her infidelity. Line 19 "my ribs crack" seems to elude to both the crushing weight of having a man on top of her during sex and one of her affairs also the burden of bearing the guilt afterwards, "where your wheels wind" makes me think of a man working, or in the act of sex.
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Although this may be a sexual reference, i think the main allusion is to the early torturing device known as the rack. On the rack, a peron's arms and legs were stretched out and then pulled by a wheel resulting in either broken or dislocated bones.