Alabama Tenant Farmers, by Amy Phimister

Alabama Tenant Farmers, photograph by Walker Evans (USA). 1936.

Alabama Tenant Farmers –Walker Evans (1936) Frank Tingle Family, Mills Hill, AL

They are not smiling this
Alabama family photographed 
in sepia.
There are five shabbily
dressed figures on a shabbily
built porch.
Rocks hold up one section slats
are jagged and gap holed dust
everywhere heat 
everywhere a dog
on its side mouth
open to catch the closed air.
The father is absent
from the picture. Only
his arm resting on a tenuous
wooden support shows,
yet he is the focal
point for four of his 
children who gaze
at him off to their right.
They are all shaped by the dirt
drained by this life.
The eldest daughter dark
haired like her siblings, tilts her head as 
she prettifies herself by running 
fingers through her hair. There’s an essence 
of sensuality.  She
peers at the photographer. 
She is marked by
her part in this history.

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, IN with a B.A. in Creative Writing.  She also has an MBA
and an MA in Education. A member of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, she is currently
working on a chapbook of her poems.