mdm

Her name was May but they called her June. She never missed breakfast so turned up at noon.   She kept house for a Cleric with a gruesome face, hairy clusters of warts all over the place, Afflicted with machine-gun, wild doses of sneezes,Which everyone discovered -     alas     Never ceases,   Oh Father, says she -   wiping   snots   with a towel, your hockers   are   making me loosen my bowels- while buttering soda she ate lumps of corned beef, using the butt of a match to ready her teeth,   Ah now, “May June”, t’is   the month of July, and the   basterin pollen is flying so high ,   tis wretched   I am –with   this curse   I am damned. T’would be a release just to die -   Put an end to your sighing, leave me in peace with my   crying, and oh,   is that rashers you’re   frying? Rashers me eye, says June with a sigh, and gave him a baleful look, as he slobber...

Flashback   I hear her crying in the toilet, this fat woman who says she is my daughter.   Sometimes she   burns   the   pungent stuff that makes my eyes water. Peace, oh blessed peace where have you gone. My lovely dream     gone and I wake again to this. I’ll have corns on my backside from    sitting. She is prateing    away while I watch condensation trickle into the lip of the sill, catching fragments of it, but the other voices are still there. Banging and clattering in the hall, sticks and wheels, an unholy procession of walking wounded. Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will always hurt me.    The woman in white who shouts into my face with a breath that is pure minty tobacco is at the door. They talk about me as if I were not back from the dream, not here at all. When I try to talk the words won’t come. They are pulling me now, pulling me up from the warm darkness and the memories. Nancy D is below ...