Written by Declan O’Leary
I am Cokinero.
Green run fields, sweet grasses and sky
They have picked me
A lumbering fellow
A proud fellow worth bleeding.
The dirt beneath is iron.
There are many dancers around me now
Dresses wave around my bowed head
The horizon a rippling pink. I cannot
help but chase my flickering destiny.
It is close
I can see it in his eyes
His bloodied gaze caught my sharpened horn across his brow.
El Cid stayed atop his horse,
I never saw his eyes as he took me with his pike.
I am panting
There is something on my back
Some burden I am carrying that I cannot see
The ring has become a crescent in the waning sun
I feel the outline of Mother Mary beneath me.
I am Cokinero.
This proud bull across from me.
I hold my saber within my folded velvet armor
and arch my back to avoid his horns.
I am chasing his legend.
He will join the iron-dirt beneath him
His blood will mingle with those before him
he will make me the matador that my father dreamed of.
Horns crescendo
the crowd becomes a white foam halo around the blazing sun.
I will go out like a meteor!
I am Cokinero!
My blazing and fiery blood will turn those loose scarves pink-red,
dresses lay across our communal grave.
The halo will be repaved, redrawn
An eternal circle in which we have come to rest
And rest we will, again.