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Monday Meditations
This week's (and next week's) poem was first published in South Dakota in Poems (South Dakota State Poetry Society, 2021), a wonderful anthology of work by South Dakota writers and writers with a South Dakota connection, edited by former South Dakota poet laureate Christine Stewart-Nuñez. You can get a copy here: South Dakota in Poems.
BRACE YOURSELF
a South Dakota Thanksgiving
The turkey will be spatchcocked, splayed
like a fallen Pilgrim. Potatoes will be
rough-mashed, with polkadots of peel
and enough garlic & rosemary to ward
off vampires. Grandma will find a way
to work candy red hots into every dessert:
green jello salad, sweet potato pie, Eagle
brand caramel pudding. There will be no
stuffing. There will be serious talk of lutefisk
and lefse, hot dishes, bars, Mrs. Larson’s
prizewinning crabapple jelly. There will
be a few passing remarks about religion
and politics, and no one will disagree.
Uncle Boots will flip out his dentures
for the kids and tell Ole and Lena jokes.
The register of our combined knee-slapping
guffawing will wake the night-shift neighbors.
The Trolls movie will play in the living
room, and we will all stop to sing along,
dramatically and with hand gestures, to
“True Colors.” Grandkids will sweetly play
until, fully-amped on pudding and jello,
they will turn Mr. or Ms. Hyde, baring teeth
& claws, upturning furniture, snapping heads
off Barbies, trampolining on perfectly relaxed,
napping bellies. Something will be broken
beyond repair. Someone will get hurt. Someone
will sneak off to hide in the quiet basement.
And as we’re putting on our coats to leave,
we will all give true & serious thanks—
that we have each other,
that we made it out alive,
that it’s over until next year.