Classic Poem

–after the Pulitzer Prize-winning
1968 photo taken by Nick Ut
of a Viet Cong guerilla being executed
by South Vietnam’s national police chief
This is not
how death is made
permanent. Not
the camera’s flash,
the irony of sunlight
on gunmetal,
but the hand gripping the pistol
(a yellow hand)
and the face squinting
behind the barrel
(a yellow face).
Like all captured life
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.