Cowboy Take Me Away
Why do immigrants love America
so much? Tennessee asks, who
took his name from his homeland.
Maybe we have to love it, having
given up everything familiar
for the false promise. Having
pinned so much on it.
God’s like that, a story
filling up the empty plate. Lucky
to hate a country and reap it. To take
what you want as you turn your back
on what’s yours. Look, a golf course
called Arrowhead. Look, 700 acres
of wild prairie for the wild bison.
Somebody’s god said let there be freedom
and let there be a price.
Horror of feedlots across Texas, Kansas,
landscape a black dot graph of shit ponds
burning in 100 degree heat.
How could you condemn an animal
to life without pleasure, without beauty?
How could we not? Tennessee replies.
Look what we did to people. Dispersed.
Who puts the dot on the map? Windows up
but death creeps in any way
let’s start the playlist over, the one called
Cowboy Take Me Away. This is a song you know.
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About the Author
Gala Mukomolova is a Moscow-born, Brooklyn-raised, poet and essayist. Her full length book, Without Protection, is available through Coffee House Press. Her chapbook, One Above One Below: Positions & Lamentations, is available with YesYes Books. Gala currently writes astrology articles for Refinery29 , co-hosts Big Dyke Energy Podcast, and is one of the creators of QueerHealers.com. She is a founder and part of The Cheburashka Collective.
