Sunday Afternoon by Will Cordeiro

Sunday Afternoon

I have a very simple life.

I walk my dog around the block,

stop by the market for some bread.

I slowly read one dark old book.  

I go down to the park and sit

beside the empty fountain, eat 

a sandwich. Watch random leaves

or listen to fat pigeons brood.

Swift clouds—now gray, now purple—

come closing in. Torn bags of trash 

cast on the street have made a pageantry 

that’s plundered by the hungry winds:

they scatter fragments round about.

With time to think, I think of time,

that whirlpool tumbling counter to us,

world drowning in uncertain light.  

An errant raindrop touches skin.

I scuttle back. I make some tea 

and hear the mocking thunderclaps.

I’ve blundered into happiness.

Will Cordeiro has work published or forthcoming in32 Poems,AGNI,Bennington Review,Pleiades, andThe Threepenny Review. Will won the 2019 Able Muse Book Award forTrap Streetand is co-author ofExperimental Writing: A Writers’ Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2024). Will co-edits Eggtooth Editions and lives in Guadalajara, Mexico.