print previewback SILVIA BONILLA
Strong Gold
Light floods a football field on television.
Strangers to Thanksgiving
our first holiday,
the right
of passage
feels mundane.
Men watch American football,
footbol, they say.
Not knowing they call out gol!
Gold shirts on the field
Where a coiled-gold sun
times its own setting.
Call out between the lips
the absent ones—
We are here.
We buy back some dignity,
pearl-shade Corelle plates
fake heirlooms.
We are in a new state of affection—
New sound:
frozen dew when it gives up
on the fire escape landing.
We lock eyes with gold fake sunflowers
on a vase one of us will want to take when we disperse—
go on.
On the field, a touchdown
blessed gold T-shirts run across.
We resist our urge to save food.
Our lives have begun—
On Jerome Avenue an abyss of clouds like colored wigs.
You’ve given us back our lives,
here is a prayer.
The skeleton of a turkey
on a tray. 
Art Institute
Strong Gold