Due to the pandemic the children are not coming.  
The adults will set a table for two and wait for the zoom chat after the game with  
the Dallas Cowboys and
the Washington Football Team
formerly known as the Redskins.

They will double their Thanksgiving feast of
Burger’s Hickory Smoked Spiral Sliced City ham,
Betty Crocker’s Cheddar and Bacon Scalloped potatoes,
Bake House Creations Crescent rolls,
oven roasted Brussel sprouts with bacon,
sliced acorn squash with a brown sugar glaze,
and a five cup Ambrosia salad of sour cream,
pineapple tidbits, canned Mandarin oranges in light syrup, organic flake coconut and mini marshmallows
marinated until the marshmallows get gooey
and impart sweetness to the sour cream.

The Trump over Biden over any Democrat arguments
will thankfully not happen this year
and blissfully never again.  For this year,
at least, things will seem to return to normal.
The miracle will go by unrecorded, unnoticed.

They are secretly glad they don’t have to dress up
in the Pilgrim and Indian dress embroidered
with wild turkeys, Indian corn that creased around
to reveal the vast wild fields and forest ready
to be explored and traded for beads and
promises of sharing the American bounty;
the ugly Garfield the Cat sweater over
the crisp white shirt and black slacks
bought at the J.C. Penny liquidation sale.
Today Dad will proudly wear his
aqua Miami Dolphins jersey,  sweat pants,
socks and comfy ‘Phins black briefs
with the not so stretchy waist band.

Go Tua,  memories of the
undefeated Dolphins 1972 season,
the big Thanksgiving brawls of 1977
spurred by Conrad Dobler
***** hits on Bob Griese,
the Dan Marino five Turkey Day
interceptions against the Dallas Cowboys
in 1999 that was the final sunset of
a first ballot Hall of Farmer career
danced in Dad’s head.
Mom just wanted to catch up on
all those Dark Shadows soaps and
Housewives of Whatever she missed.
Dressed in her blue angels nightgown
she rolled her eyes when
first football game of the day switched on.

They vaguely dreamed of the days
when his hair was thick and black
and hers was long, golden and easy;
all the trips they planned
and sometimes took
where they climbed bluffs
and overlooked storybook plains.

Today they would look at each other
with the same everyday stare
and notice their wrinkled hands
and clink together the strong, cheap wine
poured into leftover mason jars.
They toasted each other
and whatever would come next,
the decades of side by side,
their great good luck,
the incoming Zoom
of children and grandchildren.

All you wicked men
what is wrong with you?

There is no black Justice
seen on the Sistine Chapel.

Only the stupidities that
can make a stuff bird laugh-

the small axe ready
to cut the big tree down.

https://youtu.be/b0Tk-FoiX_0

Based loosely on theSteve McQueen anthology  of films.  The first in the series is titled Mangrove.  The title is from a Bob Marley song.

In the early morning rise,
my mother and I
take a ride
to the hospital
where I was born
and she has her
dialysis treatments.
Her feet,
wrinkled and bruised,
exhausted
are raised
on a leather pedestal.

They remind me
of Grandma’s
heavy black nylons
that pooled around
her ankles
as she prayed
the rosary at night
in the gentle sway
of her rocking chair,
praying through the days
and all the
joyful,
luminous,
sorrowful,
glorious mysteries,
the standing
required for raising
thirteen children
on platefuls
of morning quesitos,
revoltillos,
bowls of crema
and loaves
of pan de aqua,
three hours
of washing, ironing
and folding their vestidos,
the lunches of
mofongo, and pasteles,
the dinners of
asopao de gandules,
the culling of coins
from a big crystal bowl
to buy dulces
at Carmen’s bodega
just down the block
on Fulton and Seventh.

My mother only had four children,
three boys and a girl,
and just like abuela,
she nourished
them the same way—
standing long and hard
until her feet gave out
and her blood wore down,
in the days before
the seams of myself
unraveled in black threads
and dispersed in tears
to every corner.

In the dreams
for the reality
that never occurred
I would
massage her feet,
put the richest nard
generously on them
like the chastised Mary
did for Jesus,
bandage them in flesh.

The little memories
are unremembered
to the world
except for
the faithful sons
and daughters
who recall only
the clinking of
thirty shiny silver pieces
placed silently
into their open palms,
betraying the reality
with the buffing of memory
into better hopes and dreams,
a poetry
of bruised feet,
blood,
the scent
of good Boricua cuisine,
the silent
watching  
mother
asleep.

The steel bar that holds the torso up
gives it a spine and makes it art
and not some headless, armless, genital-less
mutilation pushed from a machine
going faster than the white signs allowed.
I see it only on my iPhone,
backlit with its perfect abs and ***-gutters
not unlike the headless *******
penetrating endless **** on pornhub,
the unsolicited **** pic galleries popping up
whenever I try to click away.
Everything  breakable and tearable in me
has been torn and broken
and yet I envy this immortal stone
suspended here in cyber space
that can be smashed to white pebbles,
pulverized to dust
and still never bleed
or feel pain.
It exists,
a twist of idolized flesh
to be touched
and wondered over,
polished to a high sheen
by centuries of passing hands
until the fetish leaves me
admiring and detesting,
the remnant echo
of the true and beautiful,
a once true and beautiful God.

I plea for my mother’s spirit
to wait for me before the ascension
because I want to know more
beyond her sun, moon and stars;
for her to show me
the other colors
hidden inside her;
shades my crafted words
can only reflect in broken shards.

She draws me a symbol
for a word only
known to her and God,
a word so complex
I can never remember
how to draw it,
never define it fully
and can only stutter-
a seed stuck
in my throat-
whenever I try
to release its
sounds to the world.

On the 11th month,
the 11th day,
at the 11th hour,
Meagan wore her poppy
on the right side
at 11 O’clock,
just like her father,
John McCain
taught her.
Holding her
newborn girl Liberty
close to her—
and taking care
not to disturb
the many small flags
proudly fluttering—
she placed
another exactly
the same way
on his grave
just kissing the
white granite words
PRISONER OF WAR
LOVING HUSBAND
FATHER AND POPPA.

I.
1.
The poem parses time into syllables
and the syllables reach out to hold you
in the embrace of your grandmother’s words,
the light touch of motherly praise,
the squirm of a daughter’s protestations,
the first gurgling phonemes of the womb
advancing to meaning, dissolving to memory.
2.
The grandfather clock travels in grandfather time,
its tick tick ticking replacing the shadows
cast by the sun on a circular stone
that mimicked the once holy dawn ringing out
on the sway of evergreens,
the rattle of doe hooves,
every sound collecting to the center
of the pulsating green forest.
3.
The lullabies chanted to the womb
hickory dickory dock, tick tock
its way up into the time of every song
you ever sung and remembered
until its sleepy dreams replace
every still moment of waking life.
4.
The paintings in the Louvre
are all Mona Lisas and Medusa’s—
the same **** faces
with different smiles
that become petrifying
when gazed head on
but freeing apace when
converted into frame rates
that match the time and space
of your foot movements,
heartbeats and thoughts.
5.
The pandemic has reduced
the world to FaceTime,
apart in space, time and touch:
the voice, the echoing of electrons,
the face, replaced by the screen image,
the same **** faces again without depth,
permitting no movement beyond
the camera’s border, no past or future,
just a present looped and memed ad infinitum
without a song to sing,
no dancing cheek to cheek,
until denied the reality of human time
neither of you can sustain a relationship
within the movement of this thing.  

II.
1.
Now your world exists
in the untouchable,
in shutdown,
in stopped time,
just a still life hung on the wall,
that you can only gaze at
but dare not touch
lest violence erupt.
2.
Everything is gone
in the flicker of an eye.
The black bird
with the yellow underwings
speeds by in a golden flash
until it vanishes into the forest.

III.
1.
And you are left
with the memory
of your grandmother’s embrace
singing only to you.
2.
It was holy, holy, holy,
a divine person,
a hymn,
a double beat
of syllables
seeding first into the earth
and then into you.
3.
You develop bifocular vision,
seeing not only
everything near and far
but all that is above and below
the soul’s watery movements.

IV.
1.
You remember the first time
you saw the goddess
rising half from  
the water and the sky,
dancing and singing
on the shore.
2.
Now, everything is painted
with the white clay
of her existence.
3.
Syllable by syllable her song
becomes your poetry,
a repeating chant
that entrances you
until your joy
passes beyond time,
to become the only
thing that matters.
4.
Her love allows you
to touch those things
that can never be touched
without the risk of infection.
5.
The poems written
enter through
the eye and ear
and touch the heart
of the world.

V.
1.
On your last walk
a green snake
undulates in S curves
on the trail in front.
2.
In the hiss
you hear no threat,
only love
that acquiesces
to allowing you
to touch its back,
until it straightens
itself out .
3.
In that moment
time un-wrinkles.