Sarah St Vincent Welch #210 another mind held device (after SH)

another mind held device

was the Art of Speech

with the aptly named teacher, Mrs Trainer,

baton and perm and cat eye glasses

who required us  

to memorise and perform monologues like

Fair sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last;

You spurned me such a day; another time

You called me ‘dog’

I learned this one crouching in a kennel

with my dog, he of lollop tongue and dribble,

me saying it in his ear, over, over

I stood on the teachers' desk to perform

my eyes and voice above the girls' heads

parted hair and plaits

Mrs Trainer nodding in time

and then our voice choir, like a thrashing sea

lifting in a wave,  then a whisper hush

Shylock and Iago,

poems, hymns, and psalms

fragmented in my body

in the tight enclosure of the shower I recall

the patterns of the words like water falling