Turkey is bitter
that’s why there’s cranberry sauce
heaps and heaps of it
to sweeten the taste and make
history palatable
so we’ll be happy
as the tryptophan sedates
the whole family
and we cheer as a pop star
sings the national anthem
and our uncle, the
racist, segways from bashing
activist athletes
to the north bound refugees
who fell from the news-cycle
after the midterms
‘they’ll destroy America’
says our dear uncle
‘no illegal immigrants’
says a cousin, deviled egg
in one hand, whiskey
in the other, losing sight
of the irony
as they proceed to attack
the indigenous people
fighting to protect
everything that sustains life
from the children of
the illegal immigrants
who came here and stole far more
than underpaid jobs
harvesting the nations food,
who came here and stole
this continent, body and
soul, and used cranberry sauce
to help hide the taste
of genocide, a flood of
gravy to help hide
the truth of Plymouth,
stuffing to keep us chewing
so we can’t ask why
Governor William Bradford
accepted their food
then gave the Wampanoag
a Judas kiss. We can’t miss
the next game, Cowboys
play the Redskins, grab a beer
we can focus now
that our racist relatives
are drunk driving themselves home
and part of us cries
for them because it must hurt
to hold so much hate
so much anger, so much fear
and part of us cries because
it took us so long
to realize we’d rather
be breaking bread with
the oppressed instead of the
oppressors, even if they’re
family. We see
now that we’d rather starve than
eat turkey, even
if there are heaps and heaps of
cranberry sauce, even if
there is pumpkin pie,
we’d rather die than honor
this genocidal
folklore, we’d rather die than
celebrate the beginning
of four-hundred years
of war which has stolen names
from tribes and from chiefs
and turned them into aircraft
feared by people everywhere
as they are hunted
the way our founding fathers
hunted nations like
the Apache and leaders
like Black Hawk
and we use these names
in places we send our kids
to both traumatize
and get traumatized, to kill
and get killed, and eat their fill
in the eerily
decorated chow-halls while
watching the Cowboys
play the Redskins, while eating
a lot of cranberry sauce.
The fourth Thursday of
November is no longer
Thanksgiving, it’s a
day of mourning and I
join those who remain, and mourn.
The following is from the United American Indians of New England website:
“Since 1970, Native Americans and our supporters have gathered at noon on Cole’s Hill in Plymouth to commemorate a National Day of Mourning on the US thanksgiving holiday. Many Native Americans do not celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims and other European settlers. Thanksgiving day is a reminder of the genocide of millions of Native people, the theft of Native lands, and the relentless assault on Native culture. Participants in National Day of Mourning honor Native ancestors and the struggles of Native peoples to survive today. It is a day of remembrance and spiritual connection as well as a protest of the racism and oppression which Native Americans continue to experience.”
Learn more about their website:
soitgoes1984 