Family gathering

The Children

On Thanksgiving night
after the children read poems aloud
to pass the time, the niece
with freckles the titles, the nephew
with exotic eyes and ears the stanzas,
we began the meal
of three marriages attended
with silences the older children
disdained, and those
under ten withstood by
pivoting their heads like at a tennis match,
while the one nephew,
at eleven in his sly precalcified plumpness,
told jokes and ate himself into a blurred state
of giddiness.