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Clyde Kessler

Hat

I walk a burnt field and kick the soot and stubble. The air is still meshed with smoke. Father says it looks like a scorched and ragged quilt mapped towards the poorhouse. But it is only a cornfield looking up at our boots. And it is only three months of work and one year of drought curled with the brittle stalks.

I sing with fiddlers
we are stomping and singing
a hat with five coins