with the picture of the girl made to face
a charging bull—
She’s meant to alter the landscape, subdue
and neutralize
what snorts and paws at the ground, what gathers
its girth for the charge
provoked by the sting of debts the faceless gods
accuse us of having accrued.
And yet we do what we’ve always done: send
a child to wrangle the animal,
to stare it down, to stand there in the open
as she’s done before,
vulnerable in her flesh before the flanks
of the beast descend from behind.