FIRST COURSE
.
Corn
.
Corn is a small hard seed.
.
Corn from Delft
Is good for elves.
.
White corn, yellow, Indian
.
Is this kernal a kernal of corn?
.
The corn they sought
Was sown by night.
.
The Corn Islands are two small islands,
Little Corn Island and Great Corn Island,
on an interoceanic canal route.
.
Any of several
insects that bore in maize is a corn borer.
.
(Bernadette)
.
* * *
.
SECOND COURSE
.
Turkeys
for Tom Carey
.
They have bent.
They cling.
They attack & capture.
It is a treat, a nightmare, a punch in the face.
.
He wanders by himself.
He lingers. He idles
In his little house.
He absorbs, and is absorbed.
.
He begins to bear down on what he sees:
Young faces, puzzling argot, meat, or "the postulant":
You nod and scrunch up your face and chuckle.
Let me out of here you silently shriek.
.
"I've got to hang up now, a man is yelling at me."
.
A pill always seems to be about something.
.
(Teddy Ballgame)
.
* * *
.
THIRD COURSE
.
Thanksgiving's Done
.
All leaves gone, yellow
light with low sun,
.
branches edged
in sharpened outline
.
against far-up pale sky.
Nights with their blackness
.
and myriad stars, colder
now as these days go by.
.
(Creeley)
.
* * *
.
DESSERT
.
The Best Thanksgiving Ever
.
.
After the meal, Sandy decided we should spice up charades
by slapping the loser's butt with a ping-pong paddle.
Whenever Ed got slapped, he farted because he was so nervous.
The ladies won, slapped all the men's butts, but then what to do?
"Take off your clothes!" I told Sean, who didn't seem like the kind
of guy who'd do such a thing--but he was, and he did. Then Jim
took off his clothes. Then John. And then the other Jim
who brought all the lovely bottles of wine. And finally Ed.
Deb came out of the bathroom and saw five big men naked in the kitchen.
They screamed, "Take off your clothes!" We all figured she would,
and she did. Then Sandy the Slapmaster, then me, then Tomoko
who kept her glasses on. We walked around the house naked,
talking about how it was to be naked with other naked people,
how none of the guys had boners, and how cold it was out in the garage.
Somebody found a big bottle of vodka. We made a no-hugging rule.
John kept trying to open the curtains and show the neighbors
what they were missing. Deb thought an orgy was imminent,
but since we'd all spent a lot of time in Iowa, I didn't think it would fly.
Jim passed out. Ed put a robe on. I passed out. We woke up
the next morning in T-shirts, ate bagels from Bagel Land, and
said, "We all got naked last night." That afternoon, on our way
to the Walt Whitman Mall, the ladies gave each other nicknames
ending with the word Bitch. Deb was Shy Bitch,
Sandy was Gentle Bitch, Tomoko was Slutty Bitch and I was Silent Bitch.
All the bitches agreed that slapping people's butts with a paddle
was something we needed to do every weekend, that this was the best
Thanksgiving ever, and that Ed had the biggest dick we'd ever seen.
.
(Jennifer L. Knox)
