Karen Paul Holmes’s poem captures the tension between desire and distaste.
—
My Almost Date with a Cowboy, Polebridge, Montana
Maybe an ex-pro- hockey player, now cattle broker doesn’t qualify as a cowboy. And him trailing
my girlfriend, her husband, and me from the Bandit Saloon to the Northern Lights Bar at their
country club isn’t what you’d call a date. So I guess I should call it my almost date with an
almost cowboy, though he did have on needle-toed cowboy boots. He’d been watching football
while apparently throwing back beer or maybe shots all day, wore a Montana Grizzlies
sweatshirt and wasn’t that cute. When he ordered a Jägerbomb so loud everyone in the fireplaced
lounge could hear, we felt like crawling under the table. Plus my friends had briefly considered
setting me up with him but thought better because he always had at least two women strung
along, one in Canada and one or possibly two here. All that said, he was the first man to flirt with
this newly single woman who hadn’t dated since 1977. Him being so drunk he would not
remember slurring once every three minutes, “You’re hot!” and “You’re leaving tomorrow?”
shouldn’t have flattered me. But it did.
***
first appeared in Kentucky Review, March 2014
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