Bushido stalking wet cobblestones, expressionless 
as Zen, armored in pinched-brim gray fedora bleeding 
almost blue in certain lighting, such as the scenes 
with the gun pointed at his head, or the rain dripping 
down the window of the Peugeot opposite his clean-

shaved face, not quite as snap-brimmed as Bogie 
but enough to conjure ghosts, and the immaculate Burberry 
trench coat hanging just below his knee caps, hands hidden 
in pockets except to pull on white gloves for the job, 
the ultimate in 1967 cool. He says as little as possible, ice blue 

eyes unblinking straight ahead, or turning, owl-like, 
with his Titanic-cleaving jaw to check to one side 
or the other. Under one arm a paper which he does not read 
as he descends into the bowels of the city, though the job he has 
just completed is splashed in bloody black across the white skin 

of the evening edition. He does not remark upon the cleanliness 
of the blue and beige tiles of the Metro, though, flash forward 
three years and shave Le Samouraï’s age by a decade, and he notices 
this and what he swears is a cleaning lady, hands and knees in awe, 
scrubbing the grease spot relic of a homeless woman immolated 

half a century later on a bright but frigid Sunday morning 
in Brooklyn, F-train arsonist fanning some private pillar of hell. 
But right now, summer of 1970, he’s on his way back 
to the dorm with some high school touring friends, having witnessed 
the miracle of Mimi bathed in moonlight 

in Rodolfo’s garret, La bohéme at the Palais Garnier, 
too young yet to have seen Le Samouraï, too innocent 
to comprehend the metaphor of Schaunard’s fiddling 
for a rich Englishman’s parrot till it dies, foreshadowing 
Mimi’s consumptive death and Rodolfo’s sobs 

as the curtain falls. And only now, in the bonfire of his 
seventy-second winter, does he notice the warning of shed feathers 
in the bird cage, understand the circling scrub 
of the cleaning lady’s brush, the steel 
of the assassin’s impassivity 

embedded between his shoulder blades, 
the smothering effect of the sweet barbecue stench 
of deliberate indifference. A canary sings. He strokes 
the fedora’s brim, pulls on white gloves, and fires. 
A professional job, right between those iceberg blues. 

At the Palais Garnier, the curtain falls, 
but on the F-train, to no applause, 
a homeless woman yawns 
and flutters open 
melanin-laden eyes. 

Publisher’s Note:

Alain Fabien Maurice Marcel Delon (1935–2024) was a French actor, film producer, screenwriter, singer, and businessman who became a leading European star of the late 1950s to 1980s (source: Wikipedia).

Known for his striking looks and magnetic presence, Delon starred in more than 90 films, often playing “characters who seemed on the surface to be effortless and suave. ... But Delon’s most remarkable performance came in Le Samouraï (1967). Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville, Delon played Jef Costello, a stoic, methodical hitman, in a performance that became a benchmark for the ‘cool’ anti-hero archetype in cinema.”

Source of quotation: “Alain Delon was an enigmatic anti-hero, and France’s most beautiful male movie star” by Ben McCann in The Conversation (19 August 2024); link retrieved on 27 July 2025:
https://theconversation.com/alain-delon-was-an-enigmatic-anti-hero-and-frances-most-beautiful-male-movie-star-237011

Robert L. Dean, Jr.

is the author of Pulp (Finishing Line Press, 2022); The Aerialist Will Not Be Performing, ekphrastic poems and short fictions in response to the art of Steven Schroeder (Turning Plow Press, 2020); and At the Lake with Heisenberg (Spartan Press, 2018). His book of ekphrastic poems and flash fictions, The Night Window, written to photographs by Jason Baldinger, is forthcoming.

Dean’s work has been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and has appeared or is forthcoming in: Chiron Review; The Ekphrastic Review; Flint Hills Review; Heartland! Poetry of Love, Resistance & Solidarity; I-70 Review; Illya’s Honey; KYSO Flash; MacQueen’s Quinterly; Midwest Quarterly; MockingHeart Review; October Hill Magazine; Red River Review; River City Poetry; Sheila-Na-Gig online; Shot Glass; Suisun Valley Review; Synkroniciti; Thorny Locust; Waco WordFest Anthology 2022; and the Wichita Broadside Project.

A native Kansan, Dean studied music composition with Dr. Walter Mays at Wichita State University before going on the road as a bass player, conductor, and arranger; he was a professional musician for 30 years, playing with acts such as Jesse Lopez, Bo Didley, Frank Sinatra Jr., Vic Damone, Jim Stafford, Kenny Rankin, B. W. Stevenson, and the Dallas Jazz Orchestra. And he put in a stint with the house band at the Fairmont Hotel Venetian Room in Dallas. While living in Dallas, he also worked 20 years for The Dallas Morning News and made the transition from music to writing before moving back to Kansas in 2007.

Dean is a member of The Writers Place and the Kansas Authors Club. He lives in Augusta, Kansas, midway between the Air Capital of the World and the Flint Hills.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Crosswalk Jesus: A Moment in Four Facets, prose poem by Robert L. Dean, Jr. published in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 25, September 2024) and nominated for Best Small Fictions 2025

⚡ At the Lake with Schrödinger’s Cat, poem by Dean published in MacQ (Issue 21, January 2024) and nominated for the Pushcart Prize

⚡ Breath of the Lord, ekphrastic poem by Dean after a photograph by Jason Baldinger, published in MacQ (Issue 19, August 2023) and nominated for Best Spiritual Literature 2024

⚡ Finding the Door: One Writer’s Approach to Ekphrasis, an essay on craft by Robert L. Dean, Jr. in MacQ (Issue 13, May 2022)

⚡ Windmill, ekphrastic poem inspired by Dean’s maternal grandfather, published in KYSO Flash (Issue 11, Spring 2019) and nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

⚡ Metal Man, ekphrastic poem inspired by a 1955 photograph of Dean’s paternal grandfather in the Boeing machine shop, published in The Ekphrastic Review (28 July 2018) and nominated for Best of the Net

⚡ Llama, 1957, ekphrastic haibun by Robert L. Dean, Jr. inspired by Inge Morath’s photograph A Llama in Times Square, published in The Ekphrastic Review (13 January 2018)

⚡ Hopper and Dean: Interview and poems in River City Poetry (Fall 2017)