Cowboys
by Liam Rector
So many movie men
Drifting and afraid
Of being wrangled
By some woman
Into settling,
Into coming in
Off the range, out
Of the great outdoors.
So many whiskies
Downed at saloons
Not then portrayed as
The whorehouses they were.
In Victorian England
The number of whorehouses
Soared to a planetary high,
The West our answer to Victoria.
But back to the cowboys,
Their drifting, their looking
For some way to be
Good men who killed.
I was a cowboy
In the fourth grade,
A cowboy never
To be roped in
To any regular job,
Cowboy before the age
When every notion of men
Came into range, into
Wholesale examination,
When even a woman
Might look forward to
Being in an army, being
A good woman who kills,
Rather than servicing some
Man, some house with its
Never-to-be-paid-off
Mortgage, and even doing that
With one’s own true love,
That bastard,
That no good cowboy.
