She was working first
shift at Taco Bell
when out of Hong Kong
and the two-fisted guns
and that scene in the kitchen
where he rolled through flour
for dumplings and rose white
faced as the angel of death
or that night where pigeons
and candles in the chapel
scattered into cinematic
history, Chow Yun Fat
appeared at the driveby
window, waiting for
his two chaluppas
and a Diet Coke. If
Hmong was a word
among many she could
pronounce, if the Chinese
drove her people
into Laos and the CIA
and VC, if she was still
shifting off X and a little
high on chronic, no one
in the kitchen cared
when she squealed
like a white school girl
at the Backstreet Boys,
“It’s him, it’s him” after
the star of The Killer, the cat
the LA Times dubbed “the coolest
actor in the world,” turned
onto Snelling and drove off.
David Mura has written three books of poetry: Angels for the Burning, The Colors of Desire, and After We Lost Our Way. He recently published a novel, Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire. If you don’t know who Chow Yun Fat is, go rent The Killer or Hardboiled.