copper
angel
I don’t
like the idea of angels
giving me
the angle
of Heaven
being
the
picture-perfect monarchy
basking
in cosmic disco lights
strobe
getting on high of mind
a
conversation
over fried chicken and coffee
honey
dipped - crisp
coffee - black
she wore
a coat of blue monkey skin
her eyes -
purple and red
art
lies - Abraham Lincoln
made of
pennies
won the
prize
it was
Armageddon
before we even met
all we
left - a pile of bones
on a
single plate
hand in
hand
bean
juice backwash
on the
bottom of mugs
--Tommervik
Abraham Lincoln is generally regarded as the greatest US president. During his administration (1861-1865) he defeated the secessionist Confederate States of America and abolished slavery. In 1904, president Theodore Roosevelt complained to his secretary of the treasury that US coinage lacked artistic merit and suggested engaging a private artist. At his instructions, in 1905 the mint hired sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens to redesign the cent and the four gold pieces: the double eagle ($20), the eagle ($10), the half eagle ($5), and the quarter eagle ($2.50). Since their designs had remained the same for 25 years, they could be changed without a legislative act; the Indian Head cent had been introduced in 1859. At first he wanted to employ a flying eagle for the cent but learning that by law, an eagle could not appear on the cent; so, at Roosevelt's request, he developed it for the double eagle instead – it took up to 11 strikes to bring up the details and is considered to be one of the most beautiful American coins ever issued. Ill with cancer, by January 1907 he was being carried to his studio for 10 minutes a day to critique the work of his assistants on unfinished projects, but he died in August before submitting additional designs for the cent. In late 1908, Roosevelt sat for a medal for the Panama Canal Commission by sculptor Victor David Brenner, who had produced a 1907 plaque of Lincoln which Roosevelt admired. In January 1909, the mint engaged Brenner to design a cent depicting Lincoln, since 1909 marked the centennial year of his birth. Based on an unpublished portrait owned by Harvard University president Charles Eliot Norton, it was the first widely circulating design of an actual person on an American coin. When Brenner forwarded his model to the director of the mint, the design bore his whole name, after the fashion of the gold coins which his teacher Oscar Roty had designed for France, but the director substituted the sculptor’s initials instead. The new cents were issued in August 1909. Originally struck in 95% copper, the cent was minted in steel for one year (1943) since copper was needed for the war effort; in 1982, when inflation made copper too expensive, the composition was changed to zinc with an outer copper layer. The Lincoln penny is the longest-running design in US Mint history. In 1913 the Federal Reserve Act established Federal reserve notes as the only US banknotes from 1914; the $5 notes had Lincoln’s portrait on the obverse (and still do).
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