Sloth Personified

“Sloth makes man powerless and dries out the nerves until man is good for nothing.” The Personification Of Sloth (shown, as a badly-dressed woman resting on an ass.)

Sloth features an assortment of fantastic creatures and a confused arrangement of hybrid structures reminiscent of Bosch’s work.

I like to think my poem is about how Sloth lives.

Sloth Personified

Dirty wrinkled sheets on an empty bed
the room an overflowing ashtray
reading materials litter the floor
along with containers of putrefied food
I’m used to the smell.

Hallways haphazardly cluttered
walking on top of the shifting heap
windows and doors long blocked
bathroom flooded in feces and filth
fly’s going through their life cycle in the kitchen.

Resting my weight on stacks of old magazines
lit up by the blue light of the phone screen
wine gives everything a rosy glow
trolling Instagram and nibbling on canned peaches
wondering where the cat went.

Come to think of it, I had 2 cats!

© Rebecca Sanchez 2018

About the artwork: Representing the vice of sloth, this image belongs to a series of prints of the Seven Deadly Sins, engraved by Pieter van der Heyden after drawings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The personification of sloth, a shabbily dressed woman, demonstratively sleeps away the time in the central foreground, resting her weight on the back of an ass. The various examples of lazy or slothful behavior, in evidence in the surrounding landscape, colorfully demonstrate the message of the inscription. (Seen with photo above.)

Written for the prompt virture or vice at the Imanginary Garden With Real Toads. I picked sloth.

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