There was once a Queen
whose daughter had just got off
with a pretty boy who had
blood on the end of his sword and
a princess on the end of his penis.
‘And all I got to do,’ said the queen,
‘was give birth to her.  Oh,’
she fretted, ‘I don’t even have a name.’
The King, admittedly, had no name either,
but at least he got to do something
other than sob and fret
when his daughter was in danger;
and he got to give his blessing
to the pretty boy when she was safe.
Then the Queen remembered
a rumour that Cinderella had come to realise
being wife to the Prince was no better than
being slave to her wicked stepfamily
(‘Well,’ the Queen thought, ‘At least
I’m not dead, like mothers often are.’)
and one day smashed her glass slipper
against the bottom left post
of the Prince’s four poster
and put it to his throat.
Well, the Queen was damned
if she was going to end up like that so,
assuming that her daughter would be all right,
she packed a bag and set off for the
deep, dark, dangerous woods.
She disagreed with a few stinging nettles
and deadly thorns, declined the help
of a virile woodsman, insisting that
a dock leaf would do the trick just fine,
‘And really,’ she thought, ‘what could he have done?’
and allowed a hungry wolf to share
some of the provisions she had brought
until eventually she came upon
a quaint gingerbread house.
A Witch was touching up the walls
with marzipan icing, and caught the Queen staring.
‘I’m awfully sorry,’ said the Queen;
‘it just doesn’t look terribly practical.’
‘That’s quite all right,’ said the Witch.
‘It isn’t practical at all.  Especially
when you come to find that some greedy child
has been nibbling your shutters again.’
She sighed, put down her icing gun and said,
‘It was either luring children to my gingerbread house,
‘or marrying some pretty boy
‘with a small dick and a big sword.
‘And honestly,’ she said, ‘I don’t think
‘I’d be happy as a housewife
‘with servants to do the housework for me.’
The Queen sighed.  ‘Me neither.
‘Perhaps I too am better suited
‘to Wicked Witchery.’  ‘Well,’
said the Witch, ‘I’ve been thinking,
‘why must I be one or the other?  Really,’
she said, and broke into a smile,
‘it’s a good thing you came along,
‘or I might never have had the courage to try it.’
‘Well,’ said the Queen, blushing when she noticed
that the Witch had an incredibly pretty smile.
‘What else is there?  I’m no Ogre, no King,
‘no Handsome Prince.’  ‘Handsome Princes,’
said the Witch, eyeing the length of the Queen’s
loose-fitting cloak with a glint in her eye,
‘have never really done it for me.  Please,
‘come into my house – I apologise for the smell
‘of gingerbread and roasted child –
‘and let’s see what we can do.’