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enjoy this Kenneth DiMaggio writing in the free cc&d Tax Day 2011 PDF file chapbook Poems and Stories from The Blue Collar Book of the Dead				You can also order this as a 2011 6" x 9" perfect-bound paperback ISBN# book! Click on the cover spread for the book Poems and Stories from The Blue Collar Book of the Dead

Flag

Kenneth DiMaggio

Blue Collar Boy Scout eyes
always checking
that Old Glory
was still flying on the lawn
of the tenement where you
delivered newspapers
during the decade
when college students
were burning the Stars & Stripes
or wearing it like a blanket

You swore always
to protect Old Glory
from any of those Communists
at Woodstock

But when you started
to grow your hair like theirs
and could no longer stand
such fraud on your
front lawn

—but as you pulled
at the flag
that an Uncle and some
neighbors earlier died for

—its silk fabric
felt like flesh
that had never bled more

than in the present
you wanted
so much
to become
a part of

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