On the opening day of San Fermin
by Mike Fullerton, 1989

I am leaning bent,
a heavy wall pushing me upright
in a flowing crowd.
I drink from a cup as big and white
as stacked toilet paper.
My eyes fill with wine,
lids floating shut.

The charred and chipped
building holding me
sways
threatening to fall with me into the square.

It is soiled with moist shrapnel
from a dirt bomb,
splotches of brown merging
and dripping down the walls
into the hair of the partygoers.

The crowd flows like a wine river
around a tall fountain
pointed blunt like a beer bottle.
People swirl past me,
laughing like vapor,
all teeth and rapid blur.

Wet from Champagne and urine,
cobblestones float under my feet.
I trap them down,
the wall holding me
and I holding the stones.

Attention
is turned from faces
to the fountain.
The wine river flows faster.
Now back on itself
as if from sudden tide.

A man stands alone,
conqueror of the fountain,
above the crowd.
His arms perpendicular like a cross
he seems to meditate.
Suddenly he is flying.
The river shakes,
boiling with tension.
The man makes no splash;
he is inhaled gracefully.

Crawling unsteady
another climbs
like a spindly insect
to the top.
A momentary victor
waving like a pond weed.
But its as if a firm hand
pushes him,
he topples
wrongly
softly and slow,
grinning
down into cement.

My cobblestones energize
and escape
in a sudden throb;
my wall softens
tilts
releasing me
to hold the soft cobblestones
with my face,
my cup drifting away.

I see the river suddenly dry
into grains of standing people
as white hat men take the dead away.