Snow White and the Seven Deadly Sins

Good Catholic girl, she didn't mind the cleaning.

All of her household chores, at first, were small

And hardly labors one could find demeaning.

One's duty was one's refuge, after all.

And if she had her doubts at certain moments

And once confessed them to the Father, she

Was instantly referred to texts in Romans

And Peter's First Epistle, chapter III.

Years passed. More sinful every day, the Seven

Breakfasted, grabbed their pitchforks, donned their horns,

And sped to contravene the hopes of heaven,

Sowing the neighbors' lawns with tares and thorns.

She set to work. Pride's wall of looking glasses

Ogled her dimly, smeared with prints of lips;

Lust's magazines lay stewn, bare tits and asses

Weighted by his "devices"-chains, cuffs, whips.

Gluttony's empties covered half the table,

Mingling with Avarice's cards and chips,

And she'd been told to sew a Bill Blass label

Inside the blazer Envy'd bought at Gyp's.

She knelt to the cold master bathroom floor as

If a petitioner before the Pope,

Retrieving several pairs of Sloth's soiled drawers,

A sweat-sock and a cake of hairy soap.

The, as she wiped the Windex fromt he mirror

She noticed, and the vision made her cry,

How much she'd grayed and paled, and how much clearer

Festered the bruise of Wrathbeneath her eye.

"No poisoned apple needed for this Princess,"

She murmured, making X's with her thumb.

A car door slammed, bringing her to her senses:

Ho-hum. Ho-hum. It's home from work we come.

And she was out the window in a second,

In time to see a Handsome Prince, of course,

Who, spying her distressed condition, beckoned

For her to mount (What else?) his snow-white horse.

Impeccably he spoke. Hils smile was glowing.

So debonair! So charming! And so Male.

She took a step, reversed and without slowing

Beat it to St. Anne's where she took the veil.

R.S. Gwynn