Vuong, Ocean: The Photo

After the infamous 1968 photo of a Viet Cong guerilla
executed by South Vietnam's national police chief.

What hurts the most
is not how death
is made permanent
by the camera's flash,
the irony of sunlight
on gunmetal,
but the hand gripping the pistol
is a yellow hand,
and the face squinting
behind the barrel,
a yellow face.

Like all photographs
this one fails
to reveal the picture.
Like where the bullet
entered his skull,
the phantom of a rose
leapt into light, or how,
after smoke cleared,
from behind the fool
with blood on his cheek
and the dead dog by his feet,

a white man
was lighting a cigarette.