Backdropp Addresses Cowboy

Read 'Backdropp Addresses Cowboy' by 'Margaret Atwood' and provide your summary and literary analysis in the comments section below.

Backdropp Addresses Cowboy by Margaret Atwood

 Starspangled cowboy 
sauntering out of the almost-
silly West, on your face 
a porcelain grin, 
tugging a papier-mache 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 road, bird-
skulls bleaching in the sunset.


I ought to be watching
from behind a cliff or a cardboard storefront 
when the shooting starts, hands clasped 
in admiration, 


but I am elsewhere.
Then what about me


what about the I 
confronting you on that 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 you desecrate
as you pass through.

Form: Dramatic Monologue

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