Thursday, January 26, 2023

poem

 A List of Famous Hats
    -after James Tate

I knew a guy who believed hats evolved to fulfill a function,

Purely utilitarian, nothing to do with fashion 

He further claimed that some hats

Were originally designed to fit the misshapen

Cranium of some poor soul

Who needed to get out of the house

Without a million wiseguys gawking 

At his unfortunate deformity

The first pope hat, in fact, was designed for a literal inbred conehead

Napoleon's tricorne monstrosity was originally crafted by a nun 

For a poor orphan girl with skull dominant acromegaly 

Fascinator hats were godsends

For self conscious microencephalics

And let me introduce to you to Ahmed,

Proud inventor of the fez!

Pay no mind to

His pail shaped head

But then for some strange reason

Regular headed people found them 

Fiendishly chic 

Suddenly everyone had to have one

Before long we all forgot what

They’d been engineered to hide 

Stopped wondering why there was 

All that empty space inside


1/26/23

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