New Work

Screwing with the Cowboys

With you here, it’s hard to care much

about burned-out lightbulbs

and early mornings.

I am so happy with you,

Anhedonia, but that man

still rolls around in my head.

His hands are kind

and as white as chicken fat.

His swaggering thoughts

and his eyes are strong

like masturbatory moonshine.

I hold you from behind

while you take me away

on the back of a red-headed horse.

You tell me you found a place that will cure me,

where mud is a Xanexed wonder

and kindness fills the veins of everything.

You help me down into the mud

and I pulse there and fall back

into my limping mind.

October is over, finally,

but it peels into November

with more shit luck.

So I live through you, Anhedonia:

I rotate through the tissues around your bones

and skirt the walls of your veins.

I learn there what a real woman is

and this realness is why men hate us so.

Outside a desert saloon,

I watch the fringe hanging from your jacket.

You are my sassy cowgirl,
moving like the tailfeathers of an angelfish

as you spit and dig your heels into the sand.

Lethal and packing, we stand outside the swinging doors

and laugh about the cliché.

Many men are behind these doors.

We will enter and they will insist

they can save everything.

All of it. Especially us.

We will keep our life and keep them away,

resuming our kinky adventures

as the poor girls on the block

with closed drapes and unmade beds.

© Carrie McGath, 2014