A Brief History of Cowboys and Indians

My mother sits at the kitchen table leafing through an old issue of People. If this is dying, I don’t think much of it. Staring out the window above the sink, I count eight deer grazing in the yard where I used to play cowboys and Indians with my brothers. How many Indians I slaughtered! How many! Trees begin to shake in a spectacular display of empathy. The name of a thing just barely disguises the nature of the thing itself. What’s been called my heart serves also as a wine glass, a highway, a urinal, a grave.











Howie Good’s latest poetry collection is Dark Specks in a Blue Sky from Another New Calligraphy. He is a recipient of the 2015 Press Americana Prize for Poetry for his forthcoming collection Dangerous Acts Starring Unstable Elements. He lives in New York.

More of his work in 3.4 here.
In 2.4 here.
And 1.3 here.
And 1.2 here.