This is a limited edition digital print (an edition of no more than ten) that begins with a detail of "american exceptionalism: a preliminary expectoration" (completed in 2019) and incorporates a poem that was published in my 2023 collection "as murder is to crow." The poem began as my free translation of a Chinese poem by the late Tang poet Cao Song, which I recreated as an English poem that I offer here as a critical reflection on our glorification of "heroes."