Sylvia Plath

Words Heard, By Accident, Over The Phone

O mud, mud, how fluid! —- Thick as foreign coffee, and with a sluggy pulse. Speak, speak! Who is it? It is the bowel-pulse, lover of digestibles. It is he who has achieved these syllables. What are these words, these words? They are plopping like mud. O god, how shall I ever clean the phone table? They are pressing out of the many-holed earpiece, they are looking for a listener. Is he here? Now the room is ahiss. The instrument Withdraws its tentacle. But the spawn percolate in my heart. They are fertile. Muck funnel, muck funnel — You are too big. They must take you back!