Austin Alexis | Sunday Evenings

Sunday Evenings

 

Dishes whimpered to be washed.

After that task, she swept the bathroom floor,

then swept the kitchen floor

and swept the needy kitchen floor again.

Most evenings, long boring chores

shoved toward her, even stalked her.

But one night per week

salvation graciously glided down:

the Sunday night opera on the radio,

allowing her to be a duchess for three hours

or an Ethiopian princess,

or a playboy, or a magical flute.

Her hands gracenoted themselves

out of the kitchen sink.

 

She let her husband toss and snore

under a sea of Sunday newspaper.

She let her feral kids play tent in their beds.

Her makeshift living room drapes

evolved into velvet stage curtains.

The perfume of an elegant audience

arose from her dusty carpets.

Everyone keeps a life jacket,

half buried, yet accessible,

and she had hers.

_______________________________

Austin Alexis is the author of Privacy Issues (Broadside Lotus Press, 2014), the winner of 20th annual Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award, and two chapbooks from Poets Wear Prada, Lovers and Drag Queens and For Lincoln & Other Poems. His work appears in Barrow Street, The Journal, Paterson Literary Review, Otoliths (Australia), and in several anthologies. He earned Honorable Mention in the 91st Annual Writer’s Digest Competition (Script: Stage Play or TV/Movie, 2022) and Flash Fiction of the Month (May 2020) from Great Weather for MEDIA. Previously, he’s received a Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Scholarship, a Millay Colony for the Arts Residency, and an Allen Ginsberg Award Honorable Mention. Some of his work has been translated into French, Portuguese and Japanese. He lives in Manhattan.
[Photo Credit: Linda Lerner]