[Aaron Poochigian]

Thanksgiving

This holiday I’m hiding
beneath a parasol
at night. Aluminum siding
serves as a makeshift wall.

The tables are picnic benches
where orphans sit and drain
the magic brew that quenches
love, rancor, chronic pain.

Me and that mustached fellow
drooping over his glass
are content to bask in the mellow
light and let hours pass

in silence. We milk the lull.
Like me, the guy looks lonely.
Like me, he’s come to mull
failures: If I had only,

instead, made winning bets.
I’m sure he’s had his fill
of drubbings and regrets.
I wait for tears, until,

all of a sudden, after
six pints or so, the guy
erupts in random laughter,
great heaves of joy, and I

start laughing, too, and damn,
I’m happy that I’m living
the hit-or-miss life I am.
And this is my Thanksgiving.

[Bill Carpenter]

Great, Aaron. Happy Thanksgiving. "We milk the lull." What an awesome sentence!

[Roger Slater]

I've done a few "thanks" poems for children, though not explicitly for the holiday of Thanksgiving. Here's one that was in Spider. Forgive both the size and the way the page didn't lie flat when I took a picture of it.

The form is a "mesostic." It's like an acrostic, but the letters can line up anywhere in the line instead of the first letter of the line. I've done tons of these and I've always thought the letters should be left blank so kids can fill them in and use them as clues to solving the riddle, but the folks at Spider preferred it this way (I think they don't like anything that encourages kids to mark up the magazine since so many of them are distributed in libraries).

[Allen Tice]

Squire Slater, I haven’t yet seen what I think you meant to link or paste, but it sounds like a pleasant variant of the Cloze test

[RCL]

After Robert Burns: "A Red, Red Rose"

A Red, Red Snood

My turkey has a red, red snood
And when he runs it wobbles.
My turkey’s snood detects what food
Causes garbled gobbles.

So soft and plump are you my fowl,
So heavy you can’t fly,
But plucked, without your cowl,
You’ll brown as you deep fry.

And when you’re bronzed by the deep fry,
You’ll be our honored guest,
And all the kids will sing and sigh
And praise you as the best!

I’ll bet that after all this trouble,
In heaven for fowl foods,
You’ll grin and gobble as we gobble
All but red, red snoods.

First disappeared in My Miscellaneous Muse

[RCL]

A Cutting Experience

My prostate had to go
about ten years ago—
A loss for men, you know,
since an inflated ego

is armed by prostate power
when in a blissful bower,
but penis powers cower
send them to the shower

in way too many cases!
Lovely nerves in laces
in prostate flanking places
if nicked will nix embraces.

Saved by a steady scalpel
those nerves will keep men able.
This isn’t just a fable
at my Thanksgiving table!


Always ask how many saves
your urologist has made.
-Anon

[Coleman Glenn]

Presidential Pardon

Gobbledy gobbledy
Corn the Thanksgiving bird
Got a full pardon; his
Head’s still in place.

Not only that, but now
(Quasi-officially)
He’s the new lead on the
Voter fraud case.

(This has appeared nowhere, and never will.)

[Bill Carpenter]

.
WELL worthy to be magnified are they
Who, with sad hearts, of friends and country took
A last farewell, their loved abodes forsook,
And hallowed ground in which their fathers lay;
Then to the new-found World explored their way,
That so a Church, unforced, uncalled to brook
Ritual restraints, within some sheltering nook
Her Lord might worship and his word obey
In freedom. Men they were who could not bend;
Blest Pilgrims, surely, as they took for guide
A will by sovereign Conscience sanctified;
Blest while their Spirits from the woods ascend
Along a Galaxy that knows no end,
But in His glory who for Sinners died.
.
.

[Brian Allgar]

The turkey has been pardoned! Wow!
He can’t believe his luck.
“Hey, all lives matter, turkeys too”,
Says President ‘Lame Duck’.
But when it comes to human lives,
He doesn’t give a fuck.