Eating Of The Last Sweet Bite: Your Poem For Thanksgiving 2024
It's not specifically about the holiday, but it's about kitchen tables and families of all kinds.
Happy Thanksgiving! As you may recall, last year we decided to end our old tradition of posting that Gus Van Sant video of William Burroughs reading his “Thanksgiving Prayer,” because while it was a cynical and bitter counterpoint to this enforced festive season in our consumerist paradise, sometimes hanging on to a thing because it’s “tradition” is problematic.
The poem itself wasn’t the problem, it was that just enough readers were creeped out by continuing to “honor” Burroughs, who in 1951 got away with either murder or callous indifference that left Joan Vollmer dead. It was a persuasive enough argument that we decided it was high time for a new tradition instead.
And so let’s enjoy “Perhaps The World Ends Here,” an achingly lovely 1994 poem by Joy Harjo from her collection The Woman Who Fell from the Sky: Poems. It isn’t specifically about the Thanksgiving holiday but speaks to some of the things that make the holiday so resistant to commercialization.
Harjo, a member of the Mvskoke/Creek Nation who lives in Oklahoma, celebrates the humble kitchen table as the focus of everything we also think is important about the holiday: home, family, love, food and company, and yes, conflict and broken hopes.
Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table. [...]
Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.
Here’s video of Harjo reading the poem, from Poets.Org:
Perhaps the World Ends Here
By Joy Harjo
The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.
The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.
We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.
It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.
At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.
Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.
This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.
Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.
We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.
At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.
Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.
"Perhaps the World Ends Here" from The Woman Who Fell From the Sky by Joy Harjo. Copyright © 1994 by Joy Harjo. Used by permission of W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., www.wwnorton.com.
That final line stays with us like the memory of a holiday gathering.
May your Thanksgiving table be as loud and rowdy or as serene and fellowshippy as you need it to be, whether the family gathered there is the one you were born into, glued on to through romance, or built together by you and those close to you. And even if it’s just you, by choice or circumstance — Yr Wonkette understands that forced jolliness can be a pain in the ass, too.
Together we’re a community too, and by Crom we may just decide to watch the MST3K's Turkey Day marathon all damn day … or at least until it’s time for our (4 p.m. eastern) Movie Night Matinee. My gosh, I watched the very first one, way back in 1991, and after eight hours or so of that, I remember I turned on the evening news — NBC, I think — and shouted rude jokes at whatever unlucky anchor drew holiday duty.
A happy and safe Thanksgiving to all Wonkers everywhere, and remember to Buy (almost) Nothing tomorrow. We love you.
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Ooh, an MST3K I hadn't actually seen! "The Castle of Fu Manchu!" Apparently once described as "so bad that not even Mystery Science Theater 3000 could save it."
So far we've had devious Chinese time-messers causing the sinking of the Titanic (in the past) via exploding sets, clips from an old movie, and confusing exposition. It is very bad.
LOL They got Steve Kornaki for the Dog Show. That guy knows how to make a buck off a gimmick.