The Blue Sky Cowboy by Ellie Holt
I. The Devil’s Docket
Gather everyone and hear a tale from me:
There was once an outlaw in these very streets
She hid in the frontier, but in the calm of night
Barreled into town, her bullets blazing bright
She’d break into your homes and she would rob you blind
She’d tip our water barrels that we had refined
She’d either hold your horses or else kill them dead
She’d knife us poor folks if she caught us out of bed.
“More cases for your corpses, Mr. Coroner.”
“Good Mourning Secretary, I’ll just be next door–
I’m off to send a message to Sequía Grande,
Supposedly they’ve got someone to lend a hand.”
Far away the outlaw counting out her dough
Never could expect that she would meet her foe.
II. The Ballyhoo Belvidere
A-straddle in a saddle while the sun hung high
In rode a bounty hunter dressed like the blue sky
Double-checked the figures of the wanted ad
Sequía Grande’s own hero shimmered silver clad
We watched the stranger tread beside the wooden tracks
While exiting the chapel in our nicest blacks
The cowboy stopped and waved, their glove a light azure
“A hundred fifty grand, now are you really sure?”
That dusk we held a dinner for our highest guest
They told me that to bounty is a game of chess
Always think ahead so you can set a trap
My mother who would hover whispered that was crap.
Past my bedtime, I snuck to a window seat
To study up on outlaws and how they were beat.
III. The Shootout Showdown
Backlit by the moon the hunter on their steed
Boomed out to the villain and her vile greed
“Return the loot you stole from the good of the town,
Or I’ll come over there to give you a beat down.”
The outlaw cocked her gun and said “I guess you could,
Or I could shoot you now to serve us both some good.”
Swiftly, as soon as she countered their demand,
The cowboy dressed in blue shot her right through the hand
Pistol fell to sand, the bandit’s horse did bolt
Herding her with bullets how their colts did jolt
Wildly they galloped up the tracks on par
Clamor down the line warned them of a train car.
Morning came, we skirted over blues and red
Coroner yelled out, “At Least The Bandits Dead!”
Ellie Holt is a student at Oberlin College. This piece is a western sonnet sequence that explores the sonic elements of poetry. The sequence utilizes rhythm, rhyme, and alliteration to lovingly poke fun at the genre.
