19th Century Bison Extermination, by Skyler Lovelace

Photograph from 1892 of a pile of American bison skulls in Detroit (MI) waiting to be ground for fertilizer or charcoal. Origin, photographer not known.

19th Century Bison Extermination
 
They thundered like, well, thunder
over bluestem and sandstone
rolling over prairie bulldozed by
glaciers a few minutes before
by steel plows a few minutes later
They thundered like thousand drumbeats
a herd murmuration 
skeining, patterning, over unpatterned plains
They thundered like steam engines
converging on the the stockyards of Abilene
miles of railway cars loaded with fertilizer
crushed from their previous skulls
They thundered like Oklahoma frackquakes 
drillers desperate for a few dollars more
shoving shale aside to harvest
rotting Jurassic plankton from​
inland oceans that splashed here just an hour before
They thundered while they ran
They ran while they could
Their time was glorious
Running like thunder

Skyler Lovelace

Skyler Lovelace is an artist working in Wichita, Kansas. Her poems have been published in several print and online publications, including Poetry Magazine, Cutbank, The Laurel Review, and River City Poetry. Recently she provided cover art for Albert Goldbarth's Between Waking and Sleeping, published by Lost Horse Press.