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?