These poems are from an as-of-yet unpublished collection entitled “Buffalo Elegies”. “Buffalo Elegies,” is a collection of twenty-three poems that reflect on the devastating impact of the near extinction of the American Buffalo during the brutal colonization of the American West. This chapbook is a series of 23 poems elegizing the sixty million buffalo who were massacred and honoring the 23 buffalo who remained. This work explores the historical slaughter of these animals, emphasizing their significance in shaping the Western landscape. The poems vividly contrast the once-thriving buffalo herds with the current empty and haunted environment, highlighting the profound loss and ongoing silence left in their wake. Ultimately, the collection serves as an elegy, mourning the buffalo and the indigenous cultures connected to them.
BUFFALO ELEGY #4
BY ALEXANDER SHALOM JOSEPH
to the west are the rockies
those granite tombstones catching clouds
memorializing that storm
of brown fur and short horns
the fallen nation of hooves
there used to be so many buffalo
there are none left here
we killed them all on purpose
haven’t you seen the pictures of their skulls stacked stories high?
right here there was once
a breathing snorting stomping tidal wave
trampling this dirt into soil
but the mountains are so quiet now
and so are the plains
we think they are peaceful
but they are not peaceful
they are dead
this mountain range is just a marker
on the largest mass grave
the world has ever seen
and has so quickly tried to forget
BUFFALO ELEGY #9
BY ALEXANDER SHALOM JOSEPH
standing in the midst of a sold out stadium show
I look out at forty thousand bodies
it is more people than I have ever seen at once
I do some quick math
and realize
that the number of lives
held in this expanse
of concrete and heat
is nothing compared
to the massacre known as western expansion
that intentional near extinction of the buffalo
it would take one thousand five hundred full up stadiums
to equal the population of the herd
that were exterminated
sixty million reduced to twenty three
this is when my mind begins to swim
this is when my I begin to drown
this is when I start to sink
into how much is really gone
and I look out over the city
from the bleacher seating
not seeing the sunset
not seeing the crowd
not seeing the show
seeing only what is not there
but is only thing that should be
BUFFALO ELEGY #12
BY ALEXANDER SHALOM JOSEPH
I drive these highways
which mirror past migrations
and for brief flashes
I swear I can hear their feral drum
through this valley
I swear I see the dusty cloud ghost of their stampede
on the horizon line at dusk
but I know what I am seeing
is just hopeful daydreams
for the fact is
we live in a cemetery
above their unmarked countless graves
I look out at these gorgeous vistas
the places people come
to take pictures of on vacation
and I see beauty
but I also see what isn’t there
it’s like a painting
without a foreground
just a sprawling landscape
with the subject
erased from the grasslands
from the back of coal trains
this
is a small attempt
to fill in the emptiness
it is an attempt to scream
“there was so much else here”
there was once
a living storm
a rush like fresh blood
that came to give life
to this dried up dirt
this
is a reminder
that we are not living
in a mere landscape painting
of the rocky mountain range
there was once a subject
and it was not us
Alexander Shalom Joseph is an award winning author of seven published books, most recently The Clearing (Middle Creek Publishing, forthcoming October 2025) and Living Amends (Galileo Press, forthcoming 2025). He has an MFA in Creative Writing and an MA in English Education. Alexander lives in Colorado, writes a weekly poetry column on Substack and teaches writing workshops in libraries, schools and prisons across the Colorado Front Range.
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