day TWO HUNDRED and FIFTEEN

Thanksgiving 2016

The bird is dead.

(Votes counted).

Cooked, it might be an eagle.

How the glazed skin glistens.

Amid the platitudes

and gratitudes –“Health.

Family. Another year”

we hear “That the wrong person

won’t be in the White House.”

Oh my Republicans,

sore winners all.

Your raised knives. Your bile.

My strained smile.

You spew. I stew.

When they go low,

we get high, but the wine bottle’s

not big enough to float

us backward to democracy.

Valiantly, we reach for books,

old jokes, the dog show, anything

to take us to dessert before

mad voices rise.

We share memories, blood,

and even love,

but what does that mean

and how can it help us

in a country torn like cloth?

--Alison Stone