The sun rises as I rise to cook a turkey for Thanksgiving.
Orion the Hunter hangs in the west on the horizon.
All our relatives are getting up or will get up soon
to prepare their gifts for a feast this afternoon.
Cornucopia of food for thought, I drop down from my cloud
of sleep-stirred dreams and face the actual cold, bloody bird.
Twenty pounds of headless meat, this free range,
organic turkey icily bleeds as it defrosts.
Do you see how its naked and hard neck curls into a bony question mark?
A white paper bag is packed with the two-sacked gizzard, the dark red liver, the heart.
Drips of blood drop on the kitchen counter, coloring my pink hands red.
Looking into the dark cave of its cold belly, feeling the ice in the bones of my fingers, reaching into the recesses of the bird for the odd bloody guts, I range far and wide.
Thanksgiving is a harvest of the harvests in every language. Thanksgiving is a harvest of the harvests in many languages. Thanksgiving is a harvest of the harvests in my language.
(You see how the times change the rhymes?)
A still warm moose shot by four Anishinaabeg hunters—who counted down together, before they shot: three two one, boomboomboomboom, so they might kill together—is being gutted out in the ceded territories of the North Woods. Washed in a bath of its own sacred blood, it is lifted by an ingenious come-along onto the roof of an old Buick station wagon and rides down Highway 61 on Columbus Day, 1992. It was a decelebration of 500 years and celebration of treaty rights as eating rights all at once and the same time. Bullwinkle’s heart was pulsing in his chest long after death, steam rising from the blood into the fall air, scent sensed by a murder of crows, surrounding the entrails for their feast; the dogs of the people were sniffing a hundred miles away, great, gnawing expectations of bone. With the 900 pound moose loaded on the roof of the car and the ceiling sagging inside, we stopped at every gas station on the way back to the rez to show off, to teach the Caucasians, a.k.a. chimooks, many of whom had never heard of treaty rights nor touched a moose in their life. They stood amazed, and stared, and heard, “Treaty rights are eating rights. The Treaty of 1854 gave us the right to gather and to hunt in the land we ceded to your ancestors.” Fall, harvest, history, Indians. Pilgrims’ progress.
In another country, a thousand goat skins are spread in the sun to dry. Sacrificed for a different set
of beliefs in the same mystery, stew pots bubbled and smoked among a multitude of corrugated tin shacks in Dakar, Senegal.
Here's a slab of raw red meat from a cow still on the bone, resting on a piece of cardboard at a Hmong funeral in Minneapolis, Minnesota, ready for cooking and eating by grieving mourners.
Meat eaters from the four corners of the world seek the sacrifice, the blessings of hunger and thirst, the same color under every skin, human, animal.
Fluttering flocks of turkeys huddle in masses like a gathering in church, temple, mosque, synagogue, a clearing in the deep woods, cairn, mountain top, cave, sweat lodge.
Who’s left out? Where do you go to pray? To be in community?
A secret altar is made up in a cheap motel room with Gideon's gift for The Word pulled from the drawer between the sleepless sheets.
A moment of vast silence, firm as a Quaker’s prayers, holds our hands tight. A Hindu saint prays for the insect she stepped on by accident.
Walking down the avenue after the parade, a mysterious animal turns on a spit next to a sign which reads, "It's a lamb."
Sensing the sufferings of many, like a Buddhist I offer a small plate of food for the unhoused hungry in the unseen universe.
Akin to the spirit plate of the indigenous people we were subjecting to a film, who suspected us, and who were suspecting each other, we sought to reconcile the crew and cast with the ritual.
With rituals of gratitude, we seek to reconcile our hungers with the spirits that surround.
Herded towards slaughter, the fattened, innocent turkeys cluck, purr, coo, kee-kee, gobble, and cackle.
On TV, the wannabe president babbled and gabbed as a guy in the background of the shot stuffed big birds into a cone to take their heads off. A red sea flooded the tube as the headless birds bled and shuddered. The cute apparatchik carried on without a clue.
Then there was a president who loved to pardon turkeys. The turkey loved pardoning turkeys.
Fragrances of the feast-in-the-making rouse my sleepiness, aromatic as an aura of light, halo of heavenly odors...
I look and finally see, or finally look and simply see,
where the turkey's head used to stick out.
A mass of hungry individuals is gobbling;
one small sad feather remains to be plucked.
To swallow the cooked bird as a bird, pecking corn, seed spilled in the field, is food for thought...
Decades after this poem began, the writer turned vegan. A new lens framed all.
A VEGAN RAG
Once upon a time, I used to love tasting
the crispy skIn of animals. Pig. Fish. Turkey.
Peking duck still makes my mouth water.
Scars remember, remind I used to eat myself alive.
Palimpsest of sinning and unoriginal sin,
vellum of om and um, cannibal of soul, I am.
My skin is a country of ad hoc, make-do tattoo,
a pretty pattern of stain, damaged by the sun.
Real life will forever struggle with unreeling evil.
The color of my skin is a crime scene.
Human skin burns, to protest napalm.
Eat what you kill, the singer sings, and I listen.
I listen as I've grown comfortable in my own skin.
Tasty memories, now that I am happy as a vegan.
I bite a honeycrisp and juice drips on my chin.
This storied creature, turkey, was brought back to America by the grim and forgetful Pilgrims. Ben Franklin of the City of Brotherly Love wanted it to be named the bird of state.
To the water and the creatures of the water, to the land animals, and the airy winged ones, the berries from the meadows and the fields, fruits of the tree of life, to the fire of the sun...
This hopeful and happy harvest—pure energy for the hearts of the people in the cities and the villages and the middle of nowhere—is the sum of its attendant furious pleasures of chewing, the tasty testament of taste, immortal shape-shiftings, conservation of energies, and all things that matter.
Driving around to get a feel for the town, I saw a wild turkey duck across the road in Caledonia, the wild turkey capital of the world; hunting season was open. People assumed I was in town to hunt. Most strangers were and have no other reason to come to this small town in the middle of nowhere that was anywhere and everywhere America. I was not. I was in town to teach the children about a free-ranging life.
Having learned the godforsaken truth of the predatory Pilgrims who pretended to share with the indigenous peoples who shared, I gasp for air. The white people’s burden weighs.
Now raised to make such humongous breasts
the old birds can't mate to reproduce,
the future of their scientifically endangered species
rests upon the test tube, a plastic penis squirting the stuff of life. They are totally fucked without artificial insemination.
Parasites in paradise, epigenetic mystic, I ponder animal rights.
We create the ritual of Thanksgiving, amid grief and gratitude for the bird,
a vivid vision of its tail feathers spread wide to display its flying colors,
the gobbledygook of its gobble, music to its own race, chanting lovemelovemeloveme... Missing the red ornament of his beard, we toast the wildness of turkeys,
the wholeness of the bird, what is here and what is not here.
The headless bird is offered his last drink of water.
The stomach of the tom turkey is stuffed with spiced bread.
The golden butter of the anonymous and holy Holstein cow anoints the fowl.
Covered with a tin tent of silver foil to save the savory juices, it slides into the hot oven.
Gratitude grows as I mull the dinosaurs and plants which compose the fossil energies fueling the oven. The spark of fire from the first crack of lightning over the primordial soup which has burned
with burning desire to this very second burns.
The manganese mined by pissed and piss-poor Jamaicans,
transformed into this tent of tin foil to seal the juices
of the great bird as it slow cooks the pink flesh to white and dark meat. And that same aluminum, molded into a tray for the bird,
royal vessel for a trip to the end of the world, the sustenance of another.
The smoked fish is prepared for the vegetarians,
alongside a plate of stuffing cooked on the side,
outside the juices of the beautiful bird.
The hardy potatoes are imported from Idaho
to mash in their boiled, white, Irish-charmed beauty,
well-lubricated with whole milk and fat, salted butter...
The savage orange of the buttery yams with their ornament of maple syrup and crumbled brown sugar and dribbling bee-borne honey, the sugars offered like tobacco—Christ, it’s just like the blood and flesh of Christ—are food for the gods of every known and unknown tongue.
The salad bowl brims with lettuces and other organic greens of unknown provenance, studded with the priapic cucumber, cut to bite size juicy bits,
sweet slices of red bell pepper, the medusan nest of alfalfa sprouts,
bull-headed mushrooms in cross-section, all tossed with the pepper and salt and pressed garlic cloves in their ocean of virgin Italian olive oil and organic balsamic vinegar.
The pies are cooling on a rack at the Aunties; my young girl dreams of apple; her mother remembers princely mince, her father's favorite, and pumpkin, primped and pumped up with paprika and nutmeg and sugar on its floury crust, a magical, mysterious mixture of wheat and lard and white cane sugar.
The old man across the street has asked, when asked, for a slice of white meat, acting as if I am nuts for wondering if there is any other part he would prefer, as if there is any better part of the bird to water the mouth.
Another old timer expects and gets the turkey nuts, boiled, soft as balls.
The vegetables want to please us with their variety of virtues,
plants from the garden of paradise,
heaven on earth, haven of the brown and black soil.
It is a mystery what our guests will bring, a sure surprise, yet we expect the exquisite melt-in-the-mouth squash,
a plate of pickled herring tasting of the silver sea.
A spiced vegetable casserole baked by the vegetarians.
The smoked white fish will be passed around the circle of the table,
greasily shining in the afternoon sunshine like a geezer greeting rare company.
We toast the pumpkin and apple pies, made from scratch and baked by
our now tipsily silly Auntie Shirley.
A moony spoonful of vanilla ice cream from the Grand Olde Creamery
will rise soon to sweeten every slice. Desserts are not just desserts.
The cousins are bringing the wines, magic grapes shape-shifted into the luscious and precious liquors of our world, palate of purest pleasure, lolled on the tongue, bouquet flowering in the skull of alcohol...
Blessed by St. John the Divine, vineyards of the sunny cross of white and red wines await clink of glasses, the toast.
The beer is on ice; ice cubes clink in the pitcher; milk is ready to pour for those who desire dairy. A glass of ice water waits at every seat at the table.
A spray of roses and budding Irish bells brings the power of flowers, aroma of paradise, rising in noses that know the many ways to heaven.
So we will gather around, with the sunshine beaming straight into the dining room, set with golden bowls, silver pie pans, steaming and mouth-watering aromas.
We will turn to the eldest among us, and ask him as always to bless our feast with a prayer in his language, and the old man's old words from the old country will grace the Thanksgiving table with its alphabet of praise and old-school grammar of honor.
SILVER-TONGUED
Silver-tongued Carl was
always called on to bless
the family meal at holidays.
In a well-rehearsed ceremony
of high jinx, he teased—
always pretended to refuse—
was perhaps rehearsing silently...
When all at once the old Swede
would bow his silver hair
and out’d pour a pure prayer,
in the song-singing
language of the old country.
Thank you, miigwech, takk and tak, dziekuje, buiocas, danke, merci, grazie, gracias, ua tsaug...
God, Manitou, Gut, Jesus, Jehovah, Mohammed, Buddha, Krishna, Wakantanka, Allah, Vahtswv...
Amen, and so on. You know the right words in your own language.
Forget this is Thanksgiving. This is a feast of gratitude.
And we will toast the cooked bird, the cook, the cooked cornucopia of the fertile and fruitful earth, and one another, the living and the dead.
We will toast the great spirit embodied by every element of the colorful cornucopia that is this healing meal of meals, the gathering of the tribes, the firm faith that is family, the sacrifice that has been, is and always will be the life lived for the life of the survivors, you and you and you and me, dear reader, and the great we that we are, at this moment, as our mouths open in prayer and close with every last happy and hungry and thirsty bite. And open again one last time at the last for one last grateful thought before turning to the task of wrapping leftovers in more tin foil for take home, and boiling the carcass of the stocky bird for soup, bullion for life.
I tease the vegetarian, then see he is eating turkey too.
I pour one more glass of white wine for Auntie Shirley.
We jump to the passing of seconds, and thirds.
The plates pass from hand to hand in the circle
that is family, what goes around comes around.
Finally, a flashback to the day before today:
A wild-looking man I don’t know
from Adam begged a ride from the PO
to the Dorothy Day Center. He’s jazzed,
jazzed about a Thanksgiving feast.
With a shock of hair like a thundercloud,
he looks like an old Testament prophet.
He got out and paused next to the window.
Standing so I can't see his face,
I was blessed for life when a rich voice said,
“This world is not altogether bad.”