On Seeing Roger Shimomura’s Crossing the Delaware

in the Napoleonic portrait
of the artist, a rain-lashed
skiff sculls the River,

Shimomura standing
in for patriot with classic
hand-in jacket pose,

reappraises Leutze’s landscape
omitting the general’s
crimson watch ornament

read by legislators
as ruby-tipped genitalia
in 1999, 2,300 textbook

reproductions in Cobb County,
Georgia covered over with
trouser-stained paint

while in the Lone Star State
book buyers rewrite school
curriculum to include Germans

& Italians
in the internment
the lost fob

standing

hidden hooks
in a sneak attack
suckerpunch

palming a roll
of quarters
New Jersey mint

e pluribus unum