Sherman Alexie

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Sunday Rest

shermanalexie.substack.com

Sunday Rest

a poem with a long audio introduction that includes Liam Neeson, Blue Angels fighter jets, peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, testosterone, and nostalgia.

Sherman Alexie
Aug 8, 2022
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Sunday Rest

shermanalexie.substack.com
black round analog wall clock
Photo by Pouyan Nahed on Unsplash

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You hit the snooze button
and kick back the sheets
because your bedroom
is too warm and you want

to sleep for fifteen more
minutes. And yet you can’t
slumber because you’re called
to remember those Sundays

past when your kids
woke too early and began
to make joyful demands
about time, place, and plan.

But it’s been more than
a decade since your sons
bellowed into your room
at dawn. So you feel stranded

on this quiet Sabbath
because nobody ever told you
how much you’d grieve the loss
of your children’s cacophony.






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Sunday Rest

shermanalexie.substack.com
14 Comments
Joan
Aug 10, 2022Liked by Sherman Alexie

I love your long introduction and love being able to learn about the process of writing a poem. I am not a writer, but I am less than profession painter. Painting can be very similar. Sometimes the painting is just there. In a short amount of time it is organized, painted and done. Most of the time I spend time with thumbnail sketches; start the painting, rub out parts of it and slowly begin to lay in colors. However I may spend a long time working out details. Ummmm, creativity. I too appreciate your stories about guns. My own kids were raised in the Vietnam War time and we lived in a neighborhood with 16-20 kids, mostly boys, who loved to play war. They made guns from anything and everything. Some times a kid had a toy gun or two. They divided themselves into teams and played war. When all were dead they got up and started over! It was a time when a lot of parents were very worried about the gun play...but as your friend said, I too have seen young boys turn a piece of toast into a gun and shoot at other kids. I also watched a group of grown men at a child's birthday party that happened to be at beautiful Puget Sound overlook, slowly drift to the edge and pretend to shoot enemies coming up the straight! I couldn't believe it! Something in the gene pool?

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1 reply by Sherman Alexie
Jo
Aug 9, 2022Liked by Sherman Alexie

Man, parenthood is so exhausting and you just crave time to sleep, time to think your own thoughts. But when they leave home, you realize that the focus they brought, the meaning and the fierce protectiveness that came with parenthood was a profound devotion. After they leave every other endeavor seems small and contrived.

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