by Adam Sifre
Our people had turkey. Enough for a feast. But then the relatives came. The sister and brother in-laws, the family friends, the nieces and nephews. They fell upon us with smiles and Tupperware. Then they were gone and our house was destroyed. On the table remained only a turkey leg and a scraping of stuffing. "Oy! We must clean. But not tonight!"
The next day, we ate the turkey and stuffing thinking, surely this food will not last and we will have to order in take out by Saturday. My people began to restore the house, but the task was great and our spirit was not. So we went to a movie and then to bed. Outside the world was at war, fighting in strange, exotic places: "Wallmart," and "Malls."
Sunday. We rested and ate more turkey. More stuffing. "Surely, this will be the last of it," we cried. "Who will feed us now that the house is still a mess?" God did not answer.
But Lo! The next day there upon the table was a turkey leg and a bowl full of stuffing.
"Turkey again?" some of us grumbled. But I wondered and was amazed.
For eight days we had turkey when there was just enough for one. On the eighth day the house was clean, more or less, and the turkey and stuffing were gone.
But God had not abandoned us. For in its place on the kitchen table there was a scroll, with the words "Golden Dragon" and "free delivery."
And it was good.
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A short piece of flash of biblical proportions.
A fine deep laugh is always welcomed.
And it was good.
thank you both.
I tried your work, midlist, and chuckled at this, yet thoughts of T'givings of our own rushed in. And Dan Harris's Irish Seder bumrushes it. You better read it (I trust it might still be there on his page). This is quite funny and miraculously harmless. EXCEPT communion as I knew it in childhood, served quarterly, is not transubstantiative and is instead commemorative of the miracle of the loaves and fishes. Chunks of white crusty bread from Cub and Welch's grape juice in tiny plastic thimbles served and passed along the aisle on silver trays by our ushers. SO. And the yard filled with 40 gray wild turkeys who appeared at first to be three and when I tried to take a simple photo, they ran on hot legs into the elm woods and wildflower gardens. It's a simple humor that I love about this story that you wrote on vertical white screen paper here. It is probably not harmless to sleep first on turkey and clean later or the next day. That may be the moral of the story for this family and their visitors. Miracles are unsurprising to me. So belief in them is irrelevant. Love is not a food. What to do? And it reminds me of the Detroit-native writer Roz on Fictionaut in its humor, a good thing, unless ... great, actually when she goes to religion. One fave or zero. Fave. *