We aren't vegetarians on Thanksgiving.

I am a vegetarian 364 days
a year or so but we all fall
victim to one day around
a table. I don't talk about
feminism here-- and 
dead names walk like
ghosts in salad bowls-- I turn
back into HER
-- wrap
the apron around my waist
and convert to puritanism
where we all came from-- no
this isn't about breaking bread--
This is about white men and
the Indian burial grounds--
this is about the ghosts we conjured
here-- no there is no SPIRIT ANIMAL
for puritans who shucked 
a coast of their own bodies
to build corn fields-- 
we wash our faces in 1952 and apple
pie-- fill ourselves 
with helium and call upon our ancestors
to march with us for cousin Macy
while people Stand like Rocks
on the land we bake into 
stuffing-- this table is Iroquois
casserole-- bake Sioux--
Cherokee grape leaves-- mashed
Navajo and a pie crust for
the Powhatan and Pequot to die
on the same land-- this table was built
by cannibals-- this table
tastes like small pox and Tippecanoe
and a ghost dance to remember
something about all the bones
this land has eaten-- I don't 
eat turkey-- I eat drum sticks
of a people whose whose hearts
we canned in cranberry sauce
and thumb-printed into ovens--
Standing Rock I'm sitting here
with a plate full of stuffing--
a family high on helium to look
down on the city of lights--
Standing Rock I am a coward and 
I might get to call myself a queer
feminist but Thanksgiving I am
a successful puritan-- and the day 
after that and the day after that--
I'm sitting at tables while the Rocks
themselves are Standing-- 
When I was in third grade
I named myself "Blue Feather"
and made a tepee in the backyard
where my brother and I hunted buffalo--
if only they had told me about winter--
about what the word "hungry" meant
in the mouths of trees--
about fences and the last buffalo 
on a white man's kitchen table--
heads of Lenni Lenape over mantles--
I had wanted to be part of a tradition 
that didn't involve cannibalism--
but no-- my mothers didn't grow corn--
we grew small pox and beer bottles to 
shove down throats-- force the trees
to drink because at least drunken 
ghosts are worse at haunting us--
I don't eat turkey but I'm eating 
Americans-- and I'm sitting at a table
while Rocks are Standing--
My people walk Christmas over corpses--
I'm sitting violently quiet--
and the tear gas doesn't work
on a people who've already walked
a trail of tears just to pray for
water-- I'm sitting while
there's a Standing war zone--
there's corn fields on fire
and at least we have our pumpkin pie
and our children in head dresses 
and our children who build
tepees in the backyard-- maybe
we should throw concussion grenades 
in the sandbox so they know
what white people do to Native Americans--
And all the words of queer feminist 
means nothing to stop a rubber bullet--
And there's no wound an apology has
ever healed-- I'm not a vegetarian--
call me puritan-- call me Thanksgiving table--
don't march with me-- lets drink
helium into the sun-- I want to Stand like
a Rock with you but I'm fed apologies of
helium-- white-turkey breast--
field churned with stuffing
drum drum drum stick the beat of 
all the hurt this skin has done 
and we blood sealed jars of cranberry sauce-- 
and we bake pumpkin pies
and we mashed
ghost dance-- baked
the Rocks-- Stood like pilgrims 
around a table where
I dare not claim to be vegetarian--