All the gay bars, of course, know their abandoned
patrons. Especially at Thanksgiving.  

The pool tables at the Black Cat
in Silverlake, covered in white plastic
and food for miles. More than anything
I’d seen at Aunt Pauline’s all-you-can-eat
spread. They had three turkeys,
two with stuffing: one with oysters, and
one corn bread midwestern. Another
with water chestnuts, snow peas, and kimchee.
Also some crazed tofu thing
someone sculpted to verisimilitude.

Several versions of beans, greens, potatoes
based loosely on where they were from but
also made more flavorful by additions
of what they learned by leaving.
And for sure that made them all the better:
Anup’s samosas, Kevins pervert pinwheels,
Ariel’s bbq baked beans, Jesus’ frijoles of doom,
Sandro even made a desert called Death
in the Afternoon which was a bloody red flan
with raspberry coulis and Rioja jelly balls.    

An entire smorgasbord of we’ve got you
and you’ll be just fine right here.  

And we were. Stuffed with food. Lubricated
with lemonade vodkas and Irish coffees.  

So that when we left and walked west
along Santa Monica Boulevard into the placid setting
sun, through a world that so inviting
and so much our own place, we did not think
of old home Missouri or starving. And we did not think,
in the long term, about where we were going.
We inhaled as if human, comfortably,
for the first time ever, ambling in the rough
direction of home.