The Girls in Marion

by Mary Elizabeth Naugle

First published in August/September, 2004, Volume 1, Issue 4, The Hatchet: Journal of Lizzie Borden Studies.

In Marion the girls are sleeping camp style.
They take their meals at tables in the shade.
They dine on fish they’ve caught,
Instead of beef they’ve bought,
Sherbet to follow, with iced lemonade.

Overnight their former joys seem vile.
For rumor’s tongue has reached Doc Handy’s cottage.
The newsboy’s cycle wheels down every lane.
And now each girl has heard
Or read more than a word
Against the girl some call the Bordens’ bane.
The sherbet melts into a mess of pottage.

In past years that girl had been sleeping camp style.
In firelight she raised her voice in song.
Her bare feet she’d have dangled
While a fishless line she angled–
Even the worm was on the hook all wrong–
Were bigger fish upon her mind the while?