Backdrop Addresses Cowboy
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: December 13, 1999

Starspangled cowboy
sauntering out of the almost-
silly West, on your face
a porcelain grin,
tugging a papier-mâché cactus
on wheels behind you with a string

you are innocent as a bathtub
full of bullets

Your righteous eyes, your laconic
trigger-fingers
people the streets with villains:
as you move, the air in front of you
blossoms with targets

and you leave behind you a heroic
trail of desolation:
beer bottles
slaughtered by the side
of the rode, bird-
skulls bleaching in the sun.

I ought to be watching
from behind a cliff or a cardboard storefront
when shooting stars, hand clasped
in admiration,

but I am elsewhere

Then what about me

what about the I
confronting you on the border
you are always trying to cross?

I am the horizon
you ride towards, the thing you can never lasso

I am also what surrounds you:
my brain
scattered with your
tincans, bones, empty shells
the litter of your invasions

I am the space that you desecrate
as I pass though.

Margaret Atwood