dialoguepoem #4
“We were just married,” Harlan the herdsman
told me, “and we’d moved into the apartment
over the milkhouse. They were butchering. Grampa
Dougan climbed the stairs, knocked, and stood there
holding the cow’s tail – long, brown, the white hairy
plume on its end, the bloody stump at the top. He
handed it to my bride. ‘There, lassie, is your wedding
present,’ and left beaming. Neither of us knew what
to do with it; we finally sneaked out that night and
buried it in a ditch half a township away. Only later
did we realize Daddy Dougan assumed any farm wife
knew how to make oxtail soup and that he’d
really presented us with a handsome gift.”
©2014 Jacqueline Jackson
This article appears in Jun 5-11, 2014.
