Photograph by Robert Mendoza
Model: Jaqueline Molina

COPPER

Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far;
Stiff flags straining in the night blasts cold;
In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old gold;
Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums,
Then the tuckets, then the trumpets,
then the cannon, and he comes.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The vessel, though her masts be firm,
Beneath her copper bears a worm.
Henry David Thoreau

Give an Irishman lager for a month, and he's a dead man.
An Irishman is lined with copper, and the beer corrodes it.
But Whiskey polishes the copper and is the saving of him.
Mark Twain