2025 Myths & Fables Winner: “Asian Cowgirl Is Doomed From the Start ” by Kimberly Ramos
We’re so thrilled to congratulate Kimberly Ramos on being the first place winner for the 2025 Myths & Fables Prize with their poem “Asian Cowgirl Is Doomed From the Start.” Read below to discover what guest judge Jennifer Chang had to say about her first place pick.
One of the sly reversals that Filipino American poet Kimberly Ramos engineers is to assume the role of target. This is not recklessness but a willful and canny interrogation of violence – historical, gendered, and ubiquitous. The Asian Cowgirl of this poem rides the bullets aimed at her and her kind and thus inaugurates a new mythology, born out of an army of Lolas and liberated by the speaker’s (or the poet’s!) desire, cunning, and sheer irreverence. “I want what I want, and I’m tired of calling // that a wound,” she declares, continuing, “My soul lives in my throat, not my heart, / so please your hand accordingly.” It is a threat, yes, but also a proclamation that voice is a superpower and that everyone must listen. With vigor, formal dexterity, an ingenious historical imagination, and profane hilarity, Ramos has written a poem that is fearless and impossible to ignore. I loved reading it and I love knowing it’s in the world.
— 2025 Myths & Fables Guest Judge: Jennifer Chang
Experience Ramos’ poem below.
Asian Cowgirl Is Doomed From the Start
The bullet is already released and roaming the heat-laden
racetrack, steam blowing from its nostrils. The bullet
is as old as I am, and I intend to straddle it, my spurs
gnawing into its metallic flank. When I learned
about this kind of riding I was twenty, surfing pop-up
pages and spawning myself into those dimly-lit
and spartan rooms. Can I tell you the rush I felt
when I saw a woman like me on the less-than-silver
screen? Wrists encircled, her body a boat borne back
and back, eyes screwed shut against the gunpowder
and seafoam? Today the bullet is the small white dot
running the length of the video. All desire begins
as scaffolding, the bullet muses, and ricochets to five
other windows. A dark-haired actress puts her hands
in the air, takes ten paces, and gives the camera a clear
shot. From this distance, her breasts are two red and white
targets. It seems important to tell you that horses are not
native to the Philippines, that it was the Spanish that bore
those beasts over the water and into our salt flats—
but we had our bullets, we were accustomed to explosions
long before the cataclysm of cavalry. When I thunder
into a scene, bullet hot between my legs and searing my
cutoff-clad thighs, know that this is not my first-nature,
but it is a close second. There is no explanation as to why
some variations of riding are distinctly Asian, but I’d imagine
it has something to do with cigarettes and squatting. Stop
being so cheeky, the bullet chastises, and I pull my shorts
up even higher. I want what I want, and I’m tired of calling
that a wound. My soul lives in my throat, not my heart,
so place your hand accordingly. Every steed has a rider.
The next time you see a bullet, think about why it goes
where it goes, and be ready for entry. Yes, I’m coming, bullet
screeching like a songbird, my cry a shot heard round the world:
Lay back already! History wants her way with you.
Kimberly Ramos
Kimberly Ramos is a Filipina writer from Southern Missouri. They are currently a graduate student of philosophy at Brown University. They have been previously published in Northwest Review, Black Warrior Review, and Quarterly West, among others, and they are the author of two chapbooks: "Alive, Today, Again!" (Flume Press) and "The Beginner's Guide to Minor Gods and Other Small Spirits" (Unsolicited Press). They dream of becoming a giant rabbit and haunting the Midwest.
