I’m the Son of Rage and Love

Burning Down Suburbia:

—an Ode to Bob Ross

When I was younger, I watched the world blend

          on PBS. The painter with the Jewfro hypnotized me.

 

With a thumb hooked through the palette,

          he painted forward from the base coat

like a god might use a blueprint.

          Behind the image is always the word:

light. On top came tiny crisscross strokes

          of phthalo blue. A rapturous pinwheel of words

 

unveiled sky. Two sharp strokes of titanium white

          slashed with gray from the master's knife

became wings, gulls taking flight. I begged for nothing

          but paints that summer. Already equipped -with an afro,

I sat before the paper and the cakes of color

          and tried to figure out the path to cerulean,

the wrist twist to evergreens and the motion

          for clouds. The oversaturated paper dried and cracked

 

with the fine lines of lightning. The worlds he reproduced

          might as well have been Asgard or Olympus.

How I longed for a visit. Might he come

          armed with a fan brush and dressed in a button down?

 

To be soothed by his voice and taken,

          lured from the dining-room table and shown

 

the suburb's majesty. Look son, he might say,

          at the pile of autumn leaves, the shade

 

on that forest-green trash bag. Using his two-inch brush

          he'd blend the prefab homes on the hill

until they seemed mysterious, folded hues

          of Prussian blue, Van Dyke brown, and a blaze of alizarin crimson.

Sjohnna McCray.