Fat and red, a placenta
Paralysing the kicking lovers.
Cobra light
Squeezing the breath from blood bells
Of the fuscia. I could draw no breath,
Dead and moneyless,
Overexposed, like an X-ray.
Who do you think you are?
A Communion wafer? Blubbery Mary?
I shall take no bite of your body,
Bottle in which I live,
Ghastly Vatican.
I am sick to death of hot salt.
Green as eunuchs, your wishes
Hiss at my sins.
Off, off, eely tentacle!
The reference to ‘salt’ is difficult to interpret. ‘Hot salt’ could be a reference to grief and pain, as tears are both hot and salty.  We may also think of ‘salt of the earth’ and to ‘rub salt into a wound’. Salt is also essential to life. Therefore there is a contradiction. Is Plath’s mother essential to her? People who are fundamentally honest and reliable are sometimes described as ‘salt of the earth’. So is this Plath’s concession that her mother is a decent person, essential to her daughter, and yet at the same time she exacerbates Plath’s unhappiness? And why should the salt be ‘hot’? Maybe this is to add yet more pain to the wound. 
 Another possibility is the superstition around salt. There is a gothic tradition that it can ward off evil and frighten demons. We may sometimes throw a pinch of salt over the left shoulder to counter the devil. Is Plath associating her mother with evil and she therefore throws salt at her to keep her away? This would make sense of ‘hot’, in that the salt may be touched by the fires of hell. (Thanks to student LS for this paragraph of analysis).
Medusa