EASTER SUNDAY (after John Wieners)

This morning my husband shaves
the lawn, the grass trimmer

choking up before the yard
is fully manicured,

we keep our shoes on
at our neighbor’s flat

Maundy & Paschal greetings –
traditions we leave behind
in Anatole

at the host’s table someone
counts the number of skeptics
out at sunrise

clipping the green while
overheard from
the kitchen

I decided to give
up Lent for Lent

not one,
to be outdone
the native scribbler shows

off her sculpting chops
in yellow marshmallow
tableaux, the memoir of

her characters retold
through sugar-spun rabbits,
a gelatin hostess gift

for the vegetarian mistress
of the household, indelible
while tomorrow

marks the start of
Rwandan Genocide Memorial
Week, remembering

eight days into April
the poet of Boston’s Joy Street

who imagined a new
cross in the wind
a communion

where we are
altered by another’s
charity, taken aback

by the soft push
against the cheek

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