THE BANQUET

– Alicia Ostriker –

            For Dunya Mikhail

I am making a banquet of the wars we love
I am swallowing up the six million plus                                

gypsies homosexuals the feeble plus
the sixty million and more

mentioned by Morrison in the dedication
to Beloved for there are things we eat to live

and things we eat for entertainment
for the taste of poison, my country’s wounds

my mind my body takes them in plus
Vilna Dresden Nanjing Nagasaki

Palestine Memphis Baghdad the Congo
The former Yugoslavia

And the other Americas United Fruit smiling
La Virgen weeping Los Indios bleeding 

And here I am sucking that blood
in the land of the free

in the land of the free and the drugged
in the nation of money 

all of us shoppers all of us holy innocents
all of us readers and writers of righteous tweets

all of us vampires and voters, all of us sports fans
sucking it up brushing our capital teeth