'Taos' by Jillena Rose

Image: "From the Faraway, Nearby, Georgia O’Keeffe," 1938, accompanying "Taos," a poem by Jillena Rose

Bones are easier to find than flowers
in the desert, so I paint these:
Fine white skulls of cows and horses.

When I lie flat under the stars
in the back of the car, coyotes howling
in the scrub pines, easy to feel how those bones
are so much like mine: Here is my pelvis,
like the pelvis I found today
bleached by the sun and the sand. Same
hole where the hip would go, same

white curve of bone beneath my flesh
same cradle of life, silent and still in me.

'Taos' by Jillena Rose | berfrois