Spirit of the Cowboy

Spirit of the Cowboy is the genre-defying 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.