Bio: Brett Evans lives, writes, and drinks in his native North Wales. Brett is co-editor at the poetry and prose journal Prole. His two pamphlets, The Devil’s Tattoo (2015) and Sloth and the Art of Self-deprecation (2018), are published by Indigo Dreams. Gin, jazz, and a Jack Russell are his perfect cocktail for life.
Sloth on the Cross
Sloth is dredged from torpidity
by a strange breed intent on banging on
about a man dying for sins. Sloth asks
if we all aren’t, and in his wooziness
swears he hears himself a sin;
rich, he thinks, from unsolicited
slumber-wreckers.
Welcome to his sins; Sloth hopes
that they won’t wash his sleep away
yet does his best to remain alert, endure
their noon-time story. Sloth’s lazy thinking,
between belly and ball scratches,
concludes they do disservice
to the back-stabber who did himself in.
Sloth reasons the back-stabber, money-grabber,
grafted for Big Chief Slumber-Wrecker
unawares; part of His, decidedly wacky, plan.
No, a dastardly cad, and Sloth’s too tired to argue that.
Sloth’s asked about the ending of the world
and remembers a time when he thought it had;
hours before this unholy interruption. And now wishes
it would again. They drone on and Sloth daydreams
he’s permanently fixed to a timber rest
before being elevated skyward – seems idyllic,
but not for shy and simple Sloth;
all that adoration
and misinterpretation.
from Sloth and the Art of Self-deprecation (Indigo Dreams, 2018)
