[If you’d rather, help yourself to a printable pdf version.]

I read the other day
in an old National Geographic
in my orthopedic surgeon’s waiting room
that, get this…
3,000,000,000 (nine zeros, people!)
people live on less than two dollars a day.
Or, to the nearest decimal point, the toast point, the brie wedge, and
the bubbly I just washed it down with.
My knee’s fine.
Thanks for asking.
It irritated me sometimes, so
I had full-blown anesthesia surgery at St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center.
Thank you Thanksgiving
for keeping it dialed down
to the right things.
No implausible, cartoonish stuff
to tell the kids.
No morbidly obese sleigh drivers with sky-walking caribou,
unconstrained by space or time.
No egg-laying rabbit.
No costumes.
No sales spike for Mars and Hershey.
No churches.
No presents.
No missing the point.
Nope.
Just warm rooms
full of full people.
It’s harvest time.
We gonna reap what we sowed, baby.
Take back from the good earth its dividends.
Let us pause, remember, as steam rises from the fresh slice of tur-duck-en,
how much we deserve.
I have a room at a country club
where jeans aren’t allowed
and an untucked shirttail
draws attention,
but does that mean I oughta feel guilty
for using two dollars in soap when I shower?
For throwing out half of a four-dollar pumpkin spice latte because the girl made it
way
way too foamy?
Guilt isn’t the right word.
But I think I oughta get on my knees.
Thank the stars, or the lucky sperm club.
Who else?
I know I’m gonna forget someone.
Mom.
Dad.
The President of the United States of America
pardons one turkey every year.
This year, the turkey’s name is Marshmallow.
All the rest are killed and eaten, on a Thursday.
I just love that.
Not the killing, but the eating, I guess.
And the fact that one gets pardoned.
I just love that.
Mom says: there’s nothing like eating
when you’re hungry.
And there’s nothing like saying thank you
when you mean it.