Pamplona, by Yong-Yu Huang

The Bull Run, by Claude Buckle (England) 1956

Pamplona
​
hot breath curls like a noose 
around elbow, horn prods rib cage.
bellows squeeze the air out of his lungs
and he imagines them peeling apart like 
the flowers in the square.

the bulls are close enough that
shirt, untucked, catches on 
a gleaming horn, loops around it, 
ties him to a fate of thundering hooves 
and red-eyed death. 

el diablo / el toro
the words meld together in his mind.

the crowd screams at him run
run run, and the rhythm matches the
thundering on the cobblestone. 
but the streets underfoot seem to 
rise up, uneven and rough, undulating waves 
slippery with something he thinks might 
be fear but cannot bring himself to look.

something in the crowd catches his eye:
red silk, fluttering in July wind. 
he stumble and the bulls are upon him— 
he can hear the hooves crashing down and 
realizes too late that the red silk is 
blood-stained.

Yong-Yu Huang

Yong-Yu Huang is a Taiwanese teenager who has lived in Malaysia for most of her life. Her work has been previously published by or is forthcoming in The Heritage Review, Eunoia Review, and Parallax Literary Journal. In her free time, she can be found struggling with the flute or watching Doctor Who.