Tennessee Walk

Tennessee Walk

15'' x 27''

Middle ground: skulls alternating along the center line of a highway to the sky, too stylized to command black and humorous enough to elevate black's morbidity in the larger area.

At bottom: grasses, lateral fields, far hills, pretty palace, and pleasure boat. Maybe the palace was the pink one in Memphis; maybe it was church or home.

At top: helping hands and clouds. American stripes. Figures that kneel, shuffle, and sit. A head in a circle is still like the hands of a clock.

The big field, the largest area, I thought it looked like the sort of misshapen parallelogram we drew as kids to represent our state, Tennessee. I made it blacker than the umber silt of its western soil. I made it black like the Texas oil that fuels the trucks that cross it.

Jorge drew it. I can only know what I know; think what I think. I rarely ask.