Wherein I Watch My Uncle at Thanksgiving Sit in My Dead Father's Favorite Chair
/Francine Witte
Focus on the TV, I am thinking, but that’s how the trouble
starts. A program about the year so far -- riots and looting
and my uncle harrumphing how this country has its ass in a sling.
We watch the shimmy of fire and flying glass. Instead of smoke,
we get the aroma of a turkey, same as last year. Same as every year
since I was a kid. I can still feel the stomach spin of my uncle lifting
me in the air above his head, and me an airplane. My father would
be sitting in his favorite chair, nervous until my uncle landed me
safely. Then we’d go in to eat.
Now, my uncle sits in my father’s chair. My father’s chair
empty ten years now. Heart attack from working so hard.
Chump, my uncle called him to my mother, getting jobs
for those animals, feeding their unwanted brats. My mother’s
brother and so we have to be nice, she would say. He’s blood,
she would say. Right now, I am a totter away from falling
off the fence I have always had to sit on. And when he starts
to doze off, wake me when it’s dinner, something in me snaps
like a Turkey wishbone, that favorite part of Thanksgiving,
me and my father, our elbows on the table and him letting
me get the bigger half. I’m thinking now what would
his wish be, so I jostle my uncle’s shoulder. Yes, he’s blood,
I think, but so was my father. My mother standing
in the dining room, bowl of broccoli in her hand.
Her mouth about to say something about family.
My uncle shaking the near-sleep off of him.
When I tell him “get up, this is my father’s chair.”
My uncle stands up like a statue I’m about to tear
down. My father’s ghost waiting to finally sit.
Author’s Note: I started this poem by thinking about all the division in families in the past few years due to politics. I'm not sure why this would be so true in so many cases, but it seems to be that everyone has an uncle, a sister, or someone they would never speak to again were it not for blood relation. I created this scenario of this poem based on that idea.
Francine Witte’s poetry and fiction have appeared in Smokelong Quarterly, Wigleaf, Mid-American Review, and Passages North. Her latest books are Dressed All Wrong for This (Blue Light Press,) The Way of the Wind (AdHoc fiction,) and The Theory of Flesh (Kelsay Books). She is flash fiction editor for Flash Boulevard and The South Florida Poetry Journal. Her chapbook, The Cake, The Smoke, The Moon (flash fiction) was published by ELJ Editions in September, 2021. She lives in NYC.
