Alabama Cotton Tenant Farmer’s Wife, by Amy Phimister

Allie Mae Burroughs, photograph by Walker Evans (USA) 1936.

Alabama Cotton Tenant Farmer’s Wife 

This is no silk merchant’s wife slim
shoulders leaning against

dry clapboard her eyes
direct her head slightly

turned left ear exposed
ebony hair parted right

an enigmatic smile revealing
no lower lip, bones

of her neck protruding from
the V in her checkered blouse in

this black and white
photo she is centered and

she knows something we
don’t 

Amy Phimister

After a long corporate career, Amy Phimister has returned to writing full time. She graduated from St. Mary's College in Notre Dame with a B.A. in Creative Writing.  A member of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, she is currently working on a chapbook of her poems.