My Own Brand of Thanks
What a joke the bloated notion of Thanksgiving is, to me.
I, as my own majority of a minority of one,
Couldn't give less than a brackish Virginia swamp's toxic shit
About England's debtor-prison pariahs and ne'er-do-wells,
Who boarded leaky, rat-infested, stinky dinghies and caravels,
Braved ninety-foot waves, on mismapped seas,
Hoping to reach the New World's wilds,
Where they'd come ashore, in time to fall mortally sick,
Get scalped by, then mate with, the less-than-delighted natives,
Plant pumpkins, turkeys, hams, mashed potatoes, giblet gravy,
Stuffing, candied yams, creamed spinach, cranberry sauce,
Build their own Jonestown, in Jamestown,
Claim the gnarly, mosquito-bitten, bear-clawed lands
And name them after the dung-bums
They — bunioned progressive pilgrims — barely escaped from.
Three days from tonight, if things go catastrophically wrong
And one of my kinsmen sneaks up on me, out of the woods,
And forces me, at bow-and-arrow and hatchet point,
To join the rest of my clan, at Aunt Hortense Smith's McMansion,
For all the fixin's and trimmin's I just can't fuckin' stomach,
I'll have to suffer through my own "Starving Time."
But if all goes woefully, dreadfully, terribly right,
I'll be hiding out of sight, from my overextended family,
At D'Agostino's Plymouth Café, in Clayton, Missouri,
Giving my own brand of thanks, for favors small and smaller,
As I raise a glass of domesticated blackberry Madeira
And chomp into their "Miles Standish Deep Dish" holiday pizza,
Boasting an all-maize crust sprinkled, dotted, and topped
With honey-baked, feather- and wattle-free morsels
Of free-ranging, corn-and-hormone-fattened, fat-free tom-gobbler.
11/24/08 - (2)
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