The Queen of Dillard Holler
The Queen of Dillard Holler
By Elton Camp
Dillard Holler is down by the railroad track
Some places the street would be a cul de sac
Except that from the very front to the back,
Every house is nothing but a run-down shack
In that place, Matilda is the reigning queen
She looks like thirty, but she’s only eighteen
Matilda’s scepter is a brown bottle of beer
Her throne’s a chair on the front porch, I hear
And when princely suitors may come to call,
Matilda regally welcomes them, one and all
To the Queen, a bit of tribute they will pay
“Here it is, Matilda,” now to have their way
The Queen wears her dress cut down so low
Neighbors say, “That girl’s nothing but a ho.”
But when Matilda was just a very young child
None of them cared that she was running wild
What might have been the effect of kind words?
But nothing like that by Matilda was ever heard
Her red-haired mother lay drunk night after night
And her bleary-eyed father was at the bar to fight
Matilda, pretty and smart, might have done well
Neighbors and her kin said, “She’s a child of hell.”
Her role as Queen will Matilda ever abdicate?
Or for her can it be, even now, just far too late?
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