Spirit of the Cowboy is a poetry collection in which you use the cowboy myth to explore desire, wounded masculinity, and the emotional fallout of America’s inherited scripts. What inspired you to write and publish this collection?

This probably sounds extremely left-field, but I was watching a documentary about Jean-Michel Basquiat, and the reporter said something along the lines of, “Every great artist has a throughline in their work that gives the collective whole a unified vision.” That night, a chord was struck in me as I had a slew of test dummy projects under my belt, but didn’t understand what I was creating for other than therapeutic self-expression. Spirit of the Cowboy was born the moment I realized that my life’s work is and will be Coding a New Masculinity.

What first drew you to the cowboy as the central figure for thinking about masculinity and desire?

Brokeback Mountain only scratched the surface for me, reinstating the cowboy as a quintessential symbol of both perception and longing, but left me needing more than another closet to cry in. I wanted to bust the entire privilege of being born a man wide-open, digging deeper into the open wound that being a male attracted to another male entails in the 21st century. We have more language and societal awareness than perhaps ever before in history, yet we are still bruising each other as we become either more or less ourselves in the process of living.

How did you balance personal vulnerability with the larger political and cultural critique running through the collection?

In pursuit of a balanced perspective, I approached this project with a sort of directorial lens, reminding myself often that in order to honestly interrogate my origins, I must also extend the frame to capture America’s.

When writing this book, what did you hope readers might recognize in themselves?

I hoped readers might recognize that the resilience founded upon their rough edges and sharp tongues can co-exist with a genuine sense of belonging and a desire for softer expressions of love.

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