​Their Bones Were Extracted and Sold, by Lillie E. Mortensen

Editor's note: This poem was titled after and written in response to Their Bones Were Extracted and Sold, by Kent Monkman (Canada) 2023. 
https://www.kentmonkman.com/painting-2020-present/their-bones-were-extracted-and-sold
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​Their Bones Were Extracted and Sold

at campgrounds and gas stations,
toys made in sweatshops,
consecration made kitschy, high holies now tchotchkes,
the pterosaur, the triceratops, and the Indian mounted astride.

Her billowing shawl shimmered like cellophane,
like plastic derived from fossil fuels
that were really mostly plankton but everyone prefers
to think about as dinosaurs.
And the dinosaurs were beaded
like regalia, hoops and stripes
of gold and orange and green and blue
and pink. A rainbow war bonnet.
Their bones were extracted and sold.

Before the Romantics, the
backdrop of sweeping American pride, the
paleontologists and pioneers,
they ate and drank and married and warred and
sang and sinned and searched and slept.
The pterosaur glittered over rivers of fishes and
snapped up her meal like a lover steals kisses.
The half-naked two-spirit goddess,
her hair spilling freely,
exulted and whooped to the world’s windy ceiling.
Then

someone spied gold.
Then their bones were extracted and sold.
 
Lillie E. Mortensen

Lillie E. Mortensen is a lifelong writer currently studying English Education and Creative Writing at Utah Valley University, with a minor in American Indian studies. Her work has twice received awards from the Vera Hinckley Mayhew Student Creative Arts Contest. She lives in Utah, USA with her wife (also a writer) and two dogs (not writers).