by Lucinda Trew

the first Thanksgiving
like the first of everything
was difficult after grandmother died

following a long lean year of mourning
we gathered to bake pies, hold hands
pass plates and feast

in the kitchen, aunts bustled, bumping
backsides in a dance of raised mitted hands
relaying Pyrex dishes to the timer’s ding

a coven of aproned witches wiping
steam-fogged glasses and the sweet-salty
tears of laughter and loss

it wasn’t until the bird was basted
and done, plattered and preened with rosemary
sprigs, that someone remembered the gravy

grandmother’s secret, sacred gravy –
a matriarch’s chore, no back-of-the-jar
instruction, no time for watch-and-learn

who, it was whispered and sighed, might
step up to the pan and channel the lost art
of blending jewel-like drippings into holy glaze?

there was a hush and huddle, a kitchen conclave
and by way of acclamation, the eldest daughter
was ordained to remove fat and grease, deglaze
with wine, gently loosening brown bits aswirl

in the depths of a roasting dish, whisking
a bereavement balm into being as we hovered
held breath, awaiting the ascent of carcass
and sweetmeats into holy elixir

Lucinda Trew, author of What Falls to Ground (Charlotte Lit Press, 2025), is a poet rooted in the pine forests and red clay of North Carolina’s Piedmont. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, and recipient of Boulevard’s 2023 Poetry Contest for Emerging Poets. Her poems appear in Cagibi Literary Journal, The North Carolina Literary Review, Burningword Literary Journal, storySouth, and other journals and anthologies.