“Cowboy”

His sulfuric stick, aglow, a-burnin’,

Juts from the clean teeth turned yellow just a year or so ago

He calls himself cowboy but he’s mostly boy

Nothing of the spurs or revolver about him, really

And he hates the taste of tobacco but it makes him feel like a man

Or what he feels a man should be, should feel like

Watching a rattlesnake slither across the sand

Makes him feel sick to his stomach, really

He remembers the day a rattler got his dog

The sweet reek of dead dog fur

Unlike anything he’d ever smelled

He’d seen the serpent lunge but felt trapped in slow-motion

Or worse, like the half-alive mouse trapped in the thing’s gullet

Sliding slow into stomach whole

Still twitchin’

He knew what was expected of him, really

To shoot the snake dead, keep the sheep safe

But he’d stared root-still, paralyzed, as it squirmed into the shadows

It had yellow scales on its belly but he was the coward, really

And he knew what was expected of him, really

To plow the fields and keep the sheep safe

To rise with the dawn and fall down dead in his chair at dark

But he’s always been a morning boy, a mourning boy

And wanted to die by the sunlight, bathed like a snake

Shaded only by the treetops and not by shadow.