Sunday Story

On Sundays after church we gathered round the table

of the familiar, passing chicken and mashed potatoes,

and talk would drift from sermon to town ordered

by scandal and stereotype. I never asked how we knew

such things those days, having only seen faces

like our own. But identity is created not reflected,

at tables like these, where one voice recounts a story

of a boy we know by rumor, in trouble for stealing,

and another voice chimes, “that’s what they do”

and then the silent punctuation marks, metal

slotted spoons clank at the bottom of casseroles.

Now I watch a squad, backs resting on pin oak and elm trees,

eating Meals Ready to Eat, rifle barrels crossing splayed legs,

hands the color of Texas mud, and dry blood, blending

into the color of New York City, of Puerto Rico, of Korea,

of Ghana, and of a town in Alabama not even on maps,

each sharing the same aches, hunger, dirty jokes,

worries a spouse six months with child remembers

to pay the water bill. I watch Smitty drift off,

Stump playing cards, Hendrick gathering grass,

which he’ll drop into Smitty’s mouth, begun to hang open

emitting soft snores. I think back to those Sundays,

elbows off, a clean linen tablecloth then this,

the church of chosen families pushing dried meat down

with warm water, seasoned with what dirt didn’t wash off,

wondering if a Sunday dinner ever tasted this good