by Perry Gregory

There’s a cowboy in the library tonight and he has brought all of his newspapers to spread across the dark polished oak. His hand hovers next to a tight thermos of coffee. He puts his elbows on the table, pulls down the brim of his hat and cracks his knees. Barefoot now, he consults the stacks and each time he scratches the stubble under his chin, the room gets warmer.
     I know of over thirty different types of cowboys. This one is mine.
In the morning, he is shaving in the hallway. In the afternoon, he is whispering to an atlas. His teeth are yellow and friendly stuck in his face. He polishes his glass eye with a red bandana. When he gets up to go to the bathroom, I peak at what he is reading—a biography of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
     Of course, the cowboy cries. I watch him sitting in the back, whistling and darning his socks by the firelight. He weeps because his horse is dead. There was no funeral for it, only his mother and the strange song of a native bird. One naked black tree in the desert.
     Another cowboy is my guardian angel. She works at Cozy Soup & Burger. I visit her often (with my lip quivering and tears ready). She sees me through the steam and chatter and slips off her apron. She wears a soft white hat and brings me hot chocolate when my heart is broken. I press my head into her chest and she draws the curtains ‘round.
     Another cowboy is English, as in British. He doesn’t want to be an American cowboy. He is no dyke but a sweaty fraud, ready with an answer for everything. He was some kind of journalist (glorified tourist) before he decided to be a cowboy. His jacket is too short. It ends just above his hips.
     One cowboy is really Marie Curie back from the dead. When my eyes go wide she winks and wags a finger.    Of course I’ll never tell anybody anything important.
     I came back today and found my cowboy boots under the bathroom sink, thick-crusted with mud and on the inside starting to rot. I am getting angry and unpleasant, having to walk barefoot in the tiled atrium.
     There is a cowboy who lives in a castle made of teeth. His breathing is steady. He sits in an ice-cold room on a footstool. He is peeling skin from his neck and rolling it between his fingers. He is hunched and moaning. I shut my eyes to think of him. When I open them it is raining.
     In the library, my cowboy finds eight baby mice. Six turn hard before he can name them and the last two he calls Saint Francis and Saint Michael.
     Another cowboy has stomachaches, chronic pain, and beautiful hair. She cries at the party, wearing such bright colors while ringing the bell for dinner. She seduced me last week. Shaved my legs in the dark. I lay perfectly still, hearing only the water slosh each time she cleaned the razor. She poured milk down my neck and over my shoulders, led me blindfolded around the forest to touch moss and various slime molds, put a small wet frog in my lap which made me shiver. With a metal ring in it, she raised her brow.
     My library cowboy is shrinking, slowly having to roll up the ends of his corduroys a few inches each hour.    We both have our suspicions of what is soon to happen. He finds himself lost for the first time in years, trapped between architecture and periodicals. Unable to remember all the way to the end of the alphabet and yet he sees a door.

deer, yew hav been sutch a comfert
but there is nuthing ken be done now
I hav not long
but no i do luv yew
thank yew, so long

     I wish this was the note left for me on some leather chair or stuck with spittle to a window. But my first cowboy is too far gone and leaves me only dreaming of a farewell hug where his big stubbly chin would fit perfectly into the hollow beneath my brow pressing on my eyeball until I see bright spots.