Clyde Kessler lives in Radford, Virginia, with his wife Kendall and their son Alan. They have an art studio called Towhee Hill in their home. He is a founding member of Blue Ridge Discovery Center, an environmental education organization with programs in Virginia and North Carolina. He is also a regional editor for Virginia Birds, a publication of the Virginia Society of Ornithology. He has published poems in many magazines, most recently in Still: The Journal, Town Creek Review, Apeiron Review, Decades Review, and San Pedro River Review.
I dug up garnets west of Chatham. They stared like blood ruby eyes across a tobacco field, a weedy ditch. They felt like burnt, swollen pennies. I hid them all summer in a big clam shell. I gave them to a cousin one night. He grinned and said, sew a dark cloth around them, bag them up like heaven. He… Read more →