This Thanksgiving Will Be Hard

There’ll be no politics at my table.

No blessing that is partisan.

No discussion of the election. Instead,

let’s focus on the food:

the turkey and potatoes, the squash and the pumpkin.

And, of course, the corn.

Except the turkey was domesticated in Mexico.

And the potato arrived

from South America. And the squash and pumpkin

from below the border. So, too,

the corn. So, too, the hands that harvest them.

Each red and calloused,

sweaty and achy. Most of those to whom they belong

longing to belong in the United States.

63% of them Mexican,

which is to say they sprouted in America-

North America.

Nearly half of them undocumented.

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Jonathan Fletcher holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Columbia University.  A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, he won Northwestern University Press’s Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize in 2023, for which he will have his debut chapbook, This is My Body, published in 2025