Spirit of the Cowboy

Spirit of the Cowboy is the genre-defying, award-winning, debut poetry collection from Cody Draco, a fierce new voice forging a radical redefinition of American masculinity. Blending queer desire, social critique, surreal confession, and cultural disillusionment, Draco resurrects the cowboy myth only to unravel it-exposing the toxic heritage of manhood while carving space for tenderness, rebellion, and spiritual clarity. From oil-leaking pickup trucks and Florida trailer parks to empty movie theaters and heretical love, these poems speak in a voice that is both wounded and visionary, intimate and explosive.Written with unflinching honesty and cinematic lyricism, Spirit of the Cowboy explores what it means to survive a country that teaches boys to shoot before it teaches them to feel. This is not just a poetry collection-it is a blueprint for a new kind of manhood, one that confronts its ghosts and still dares to live a queered American dream.For readers of Richard Siken, Adrienne Rich, Sharon Olds, Lana Del Rey and Allen Ginsberg, this collection is both a haunting and a homecoming.