Georgia, by Robert Walicki

Georgia O'Keeffe, by Alfred Stieglitz

Georgia

It could be a soup tourrine or a kid’s toy from this distance--
Santa Fe cattle skulls are called art, wiped clean from their primordial ooze
by wind or the torn t-shirt of an artist. Georgia stands on desolate sand,
the dry brushed sky that separates her is filled in with ultramarine,
Cobalt Blue Hue. 
She would probably say the painting isn’t about her,
as she loads a brush with Cadmium Scarlet or Indian Yellow,
transforming virgin canvas to iris,
or cala lilies blooming into vulvas--
iridescent wombs filled with colour.
She stands in a photograph taken by Alfred Steiglitz, unable to move.
She’s all celluloid flash and silence, a dust bowl stoic
painting the inside of her body--
what’s beautiful, what holds on to everything and nothing--
red larkspurs and cattle skulls like broken hourglasses turning time into dust.
​
Robert Walicki

Robert Walicki's work has appeared in over 40 publications including Vox Populi, Stone Highway Review, The Kentucky Review, Red River Review, and others. A Pushcart and a Best of The Net nominee, Robert currently has two chapbooks published: A Room Full of Trees (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2014) and The Almost Sound of Snow Falling (Night Ballet Press), which was nominated to the 2016 Poet’s House List of Books in NYC.

Two Cala Lilies on Pink, by Georgia O'Keeffe (USA), 1928.