A Woman Possessed
her face blasted like a medieval weeper
Federico García Lorca
She remembered the charge. A day like any other fall. Her red shirt taunted dark shapes in the street. The loud report when that half-smile, turned loose to goad the gusty animal, stepped out to meet what waited. She wanted to cast her body on the horns of that forgetful season. Black sounds hurtled from the chute. The crowd looked on.
In that arena, narrowed to a skull bone china shivered. Clatter of Spode and Wedgewood on mosaic tile. The cameo relief of eyes glazed forward, a crater where the trapped shale burst its cone. Lava flowed from thick veins into rock and there was more besides the charred unknown thin plates cracked the sealed jar on the grandstand shelf. It may be, her reflexive feint rushed the first dark lover, proud blood in knotted streams. All night the mad roar swelled rain on the slack-limbed trees. Wet faces massed on pavement. Nothing but this late fall. It rumbled down on simple characters: a man a legendary mount a bull. Clay of their common drama and the woman, old.