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.
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The Ekphrastic Review
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February 2025
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