[The first part of this section is a disturbing lament put in the voice of an elderly female character’s deceased mother and written in an experimental style that muddles pronouns and eschews all punctuation except for irregular rhyming line breaks and repeated use of the word ‘like’ as a mock caesura. For more erudite information on the evolution of the punctuating use ‘like’, see this recent article from The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/11/the-evolution-of-like/507614/

(1)

Song #7 The Scullery Maid’s Soprano Aria

On your knees like a scrubber you know

and Master like comes a-slapping and a-squeezing

your still like cute butt as you like slow

down and half like it a-tingling

*

down there and wonder in your mind

like how things could still turn out

till Young Master come remind

you like with a riding-crop thereabout

*

how all folk like know their place

and yours is like on the floor under

his boot and corsets by God’s grace

praying meekly you won’t like flounder.

 

(2)

And that’s how I was born, Dot thinks,

as she sits knitting in the dark of a power cut,

in grandma Dorothy’s agonized tummy and mind.

 

(3)

The marriage ceremony was a sham

and stale as the stagnant waters of the village pond

the church bells ring around.

The groom tossed his signature off as if it were a dog

turd he had just stepped in and stomped off on a binge.

Dorothy done up to the nines in palest green,

grimacing through flapper-girl fashion uniform,

grim-faced in-laws gritting their teeth

in long-posed seaside snaps

coming out of the camera obscura

on a sepia-tinted honeymoon.