He has been eating ox tail since before his own grandfather sliced all of the old world from our name, as if to say, “I want my tail back. I am equal parts ox and appetite.” Sometimes at night there’s a knock on the door. Grandfather has sparked up a grill, a weird cigar, a controversy settled long ago.
I feel his presence in the connective tissue, where the bones nearly meet, the involuntary tick. He has been teaching the girls to dance. Sometimes he seems to beckon otherworldly flies just to shake them away in a single, fluid gesture.
Glen Armstrong holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and teaches writing at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. He edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters and has two new chapbooks: Simpler Times and Staring Down Miracles. His work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Conduit, and Cream City Review.
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