What image is used to convey the farmer's poverty in this poem? De merchant got half de cotton De boll weevil got de res' Didn't leave de...

This farmer is apparently a grower of cotton, and
cotton seems to be the image or symbol used here to convey
poverty.  Each line or idea conveys a new level of
poverty.

Whatever crop he was able to
harvest was only half his--he had to give the rest to the merchant, undoubtedly to pay
off the debts he incurred waiting for the money the cotton was supposed to bring him. 
Line two tells us he only got part of the crop that was his--the
cotton bugs (boll weevils) got the rest.

The last three
lines are a bit more ambiguous, though they still use the idea of cotton as linked to
poverty.  Perhaps the farmer only had enough left to buy his wife one dress (made of
cotton), but the "full of holes" image indicates the dress isn't new.  The most likely
explanation, then, is that his wife was down to one dress (and a pretty sad-looking
dress, at that) and he could not afford to get her
another.

Specifically, the images in this poem are of a
rather sparse, bug-infested cotton field, and a moth-eaten
dress.