--- V I C T O R   H E R N A N D E Z   C R U Z

Once for the first time
the one time
A television floated into
our apartment
And the new world
became more faces and places.
Out of that box
the world started to spin.
The passage of a child
it felt like green heat
Airplane
grey cold
Geography at six years,
odor, touch and colors.
The corners became different,
down the street
A clarity of edges
iron and still,
No more palms
or papayas hanging
Like footballs,
a deep red in the hallways
Marble pillars,
brass mailboxes shining
like a song,
Stairs from which you saw
no mountains
Up above
a bigger country
With a smaller sky.
The way those things were
coming
You'd learn how to pronounce
a word
And couldn't find an object
to put it on -
So many contraptions
which had no sound.
The monster of the train,
a giant subterranean dinosaur,
It made a noise of speed
and banged around,
I expected tropical rivers
at the end of the line
Of the IRT,
Bamboos folding and molding
into church archways
In the wild.
The lizards of the last
channel
Scurried into cement,
the coguis song
Became snow.
At night I was attentive
to the new glacial age
Which I had entered too
Through some flash of
a wand.

Claribel the clown
made you sit still
Almost ready to
eat the television.
"It's howdy-doodie time"
Que?
What happened to my 
grandfather singing with
Guitars -
and trucks which passed 
With hanging cane -
White birds with
long necks curved
Like question marks?

Claribel the clown
had that horn
Which he squeezed
"O.K. kids…"
My ears fresh out of
the Spanish strained
Fua Fua
He blew the horn again,
then commercials of
Candy bars
chocolate dripping,
Cup cakes animated 
through space,
Bazooka bubbles bigger
than heads,
Some Castro Convertible
furniture store
A little girl bouncing
like a ball upon a 
Mattress.
Later in deep night
I plotted going
inside that box of lights,
Cause that's where all
that chocolate was melting,
chiclets
and that little girl,
All up there in those
tubes,
Go in through all those wires,
come out wearing Hop-Along Cassidy's 
Black hat,
blowing Claribel the clown's
Horn at Sky King
charge down Avenue D
On Lone Ranger's horse Silver.
Falling asleep:
dreams of immense tropical
Flora,
an ox I once saw,
A waterfall caressing
a mountain,
Mangos the size of
New York buildings
all the pipes turn
Into bamboo shoots.
In that time ago
which was once.