Georgia O’Keeffe spends six months of the year in New York
Published in Bicoastal Review in 2025
City. A trade. Quiet compromise.
From Suite 3003 she works in charcoal.
Windows. Right angles. Entire worlds born
from black. Inside the tallest hotel ever stacked
into sky in 1925. Did she feel it too?
They forgot to build stairs.
What reds and peaches did we miss
because she left her desert?
What screaming blues?
A bobcat spine found in the sand.
A study on the way first light moves over thistle.
What museum plaques will stay blank?
How many women before, since
have put down their brush
to take a man’s open palm
and found themselves, later, lost?
When she shut her eyes in the bath
and sank back into the warm belly of it,
I know she could still feel New Mexico.
She could still taste the tangerine rise of it.
Right there, I know she could still see the trees.
