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86 dead metaphOr: bullfiGhtinG Literature that read realer than the real thing: hot Spanish afternoons, cool fino at a café table as hucksters and dark gypsies congregated, tapas of pickled squid, manchego, jamón, tripe in olive oil. Young men are suckers for myth and ritual, gory details, hard seat above the callejón watching handlers for truth. Now you’d be hard-pressed between pase de pecho and limp veronica, Manolete versus El Cordobés. But some language lingers, as from dead sleep this morning you opened near-sighted eyes toward the dog panting in his narrow querencia beside fern and bay window. Approach at risk! Or when, hip thrust under one fist, the other guiding your new blood-red leaf blower as if muleta over killing sword, you realize, torero, this as good as it’s likely to get. What relief vocabulary fades to the preposterous. Courage? Not wheeling the overheated Toyota off a bridge. Ritual? Hand tight on the goddamn remote. Myth? That young man used to think, without a copita of irony, maybe toro bravo was the story: Five years of wild freedom, savage king of an unspoiled hill country. Fifteen minutes 87 of sol y sombra doing what you were built for. Then definitive death. Bull, alright. Olé! Leaves leap in terror. The dog goes back to sleep. ...

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