LIVING UNDER THE DIGESTIVE SYSTEM
---------------------------------
by Alice Oswald
[read by her at oxford during a faculty strike]
[https://twitter.com/OxfordUCU/status/1236639050007810048]
[spr 2019-20 english 160, shared by Lily]

Went out to a cafe last night             a kind of hospital
place with white cloths                       I was looking
for food        all I found was the waiters were rude on
their rounds                              the patients kept
drumming
their fingers and opening their head-
wounds                        what a burial place for dead
leaves                 pale
endives and chives     what a transplant place what a
ward for transfusions                  those grinding engines
concealed behind napkins         it’s an underworld kept
under clothes behind mouths          I remember
the candle-lit clatter of teeth       I was thinking
Thank God for the background noise of the same CD
being played of a flute like a famished
throat                               what a shame to be eaten

Then a man sat down         he skewered a fact with his
fork                       he was stroking his throat  he
was bursting to talk                but the woman on his left
was lividly pin-pointing peas              the woman
on his right                       was spitting a splatter of
opinions mixed up with onions he said Ladies!
Admire me please!                  But the woman on his left
was lifting a living fish to her lips                  the
woman on his right was dipping her fingertips in flesh
she said           I just ADORE the digestive system
                  how nocturnal it is to be eaten           how
airless and wet             it’s a quagland a
wilderness          when
you get down to that windowless
work                               it’s a murmurous gadget of
blades which your eyes can’t
enter                look close!             Look closer!
There are ferns and flowers that bloom in the gullet
it’s
a dayshift nightshift shaft full of clobber
whole rooms full of water and winding steps lead out to
the exit          he said listen!        This is hardly
conversation! We should ask each other questions! Are
you
fond of me both?         But the meat was still writhing in
his mouth                   he was kissing his plate
                       he said Waiter! These kisses are cold
and you’re late!

Oh the tables were dressed in white                  they
were bridesmaids waiting to be laid        there were
plates of bones being pushed to one side                     I
said Why do you drink like that like a horse with your
lips pulled back I can see right down through the
bottom of your glass to the black and sucking force of
your gut I don’t like it                             he said Listen!
It’s dark living under the digestive system           it’s dog
eat
dog down here it’s a pig’s dinner                  meaning big
eat small         there’s no alternative at all
               he said Listen!   You might imagine a more
nervous or lymphatic system           but the mact of the
fatter is this                       this world is a gut and it’s all
we’ve  got           don’t speak not yet but don’t forget
                                the next world’s going to be candle-
lit             a kind of hospital place with white cloths
you’d better
look smart                      twelve silver angels will come
at dark              like cutlery        they are cloned and
sharp