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Operation Crazy Horse
for Sam Castan
by Fran Castan
A grand Kowloon hotel. A hedge
of red hibiscus. A tiled pool.
A masseuse who pressed fragrant
oil of almond into my body
in the full heat of the sun.
Elsewhere, northeast of Saigon,
a man beheld you, and fired.
At the undertaker's you were
all made up and your hair
was parted wrong, so I smoothed it
the way you would have liked.
Someone shouted Stop, as if we were
caught making love on the couch
in my father's house. God knows
what they feared. Unfamiliar
streaks in your hair must have paled
at the moment of terror
and grown longer in the time since,
eerie as strands of ticker tape
still printing. Such dark hair
shocked white. How afraid you were.
All I could do was hold you.