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Le Xuan, Beautiful Spring I run my fingers over a photo torn from a magazine & folded inside Sons and Lovers. She's got one hand on her hip & the other aiming a revolver at some target hiding from the camera. Flanked by a cadre of women in fatigues, she's daring the sun to penetrate her ao dai. High-ranking officers let their eyes travel over silk as they push pins into maps under a dead-looking sky. Shadows crawl from under her feet. Does she know soldiers undress her behind dark aviation glasses? She's delicate as a reed against a river, just weighing the gun in her hand, a blood-tipped lotus rooted in the torn air. Another kind of lust blooms in flesh, ominous as a photo on a coffin waiting to be lost among papers & notes, but it still hurts when a pistol plays with the heart this way. 13 2 N EON VERNACULAR ...

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