The Photojournalism Archive

The wall of The Skull Shack at a trading post in Valle, Arizona is lined with skulls similar to those American artist Georgia O’Keefe would have in her studio. These are sold as tourist souvenirs.

Ring of Bone

Calcium song, bone chorus, horned choir.

     Blind-white aria, herd of sightless stares,

Dusty cranium of dusty spaces.

Echo of grazing buffalo panicking by fire,

     hunted into stampedes

over cliffs, shot from stream-driven trains.

     Bones and hides in twenty meter-high stacks,

The meat left to rot, take flight with vultures,

     or fly-ridden

shipped to nineteenth-century cities.