(after Horace, Epode IV, Lupis et agnis)

What makes her think that she’s better than me?
We’ve more in common that she thinks,
with her rough hands and wrinkled flesh
and hard skin on her knees.
She wraps herself in Marks & Spencer’s best,
but her tongue has no hiding place.
Has she no idea, as she makes her way to Church
with her wide feathered hat,
that everybody stares at her
because they don’t like her?
She had the broken nails of a cleaner
until she hired a domestic.
She owns her own property and a little car
and trundles up and down Trafalgar Street,
waving from the passenger seat,
acting as if she were a magistrate -
as if she owned the place.
When she’s around
why have we to be on best behaviour?
Is this jumped-up nobody the best we can do?