your canyon grassed over and
the bulls became lonely
they had to find cliffs to roam, and the only
place for them was lamplight and sugar-dusted plains
you had yourself believing, for at least
this night, that you’d made an Eden in Spain…
Your face was shadowed as a matador
and was given to haunting, hanging over
fireplaces and heavy wooden doors, and I’m sure
your gaze could have killed a bull before…
High over you carved into verandas and across
the sand, on the beachfronts people stand,
faces down faces lit, but toasted and bland
like Madrid morning cafes’ windows
Milky as when the sun first hits, and nearby
old men pick raspberries off hedges because
they know sanguine juice is the day’s first gem
While you sat there frosted
and farthest over to the vines, propped against
boney clavicle of pearlish fence--as the heat
boils the fruit to wine
sipping in amaretto air and lightly creamed
incense the bulls snort as they stare
they too are killed by the morning shiver
stone in a warm bath of lanterns, papery orange
and crimped by the sun’s humid warning
coming up around the bend almost languid
over cocoa-colored hills and soft brown whispers
where the petals of orchids had all dried and
split—those men mumble prayers to their gods
of lit windows, gods of purple berries
that drop from winding stairways of sinews
Your eyes watched them like heavy shades
opening small and simple hemispheres
their bodies would melt into sunburns,
with hands that grip the equator and use it
to twist your view from quiet afternoons to evening
fiestas, where you’d be when the crowd
goes by, in an arc of violet that mixes azure in the sky
you’ve made a palace of gold tassels and butterflies
tablecloths that rip with your fingers,
think thoughts that will slip down the side of
the coffee cup and flutter with the breeze
And under a canopy of muttered-like lullabies
the sleep of the bulls, someday,
will give you great ease
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Submission Name: Bulls of Art Bear Heavy Hearts
