THE FIRST
PUERTO RICAN DAY PARADE

by Bobby González

Dateline: The Year of Their Lord, fourteen nineteen hundred something.

Place: Sevilla, España.

It was a splendid pageant.
A parade of marvelous sights
that was conducted in the court of
queen isabela and king fernando.

cristobal colón,
a.k.a. christopher columbus,
put on display the exotic bounty that had been pilfered
from the so-called “New World.”

Among the exhibited specimens
were strikingly painted Taino Native women, men and children.
There was also a magnificent guaraguao red-tailed hawk.
This spirited monarch of the Caribbean skies was now a broken-spirited
prisoner, locked in a cage.
Its head bowed.
Its wings drooping down its sides.

The Spaniards marveled at the numerous alien specimens of wildlife:
Flamingos.
Six-foot long iguanas.
Mute dogs.
Rabbit-sized rodents.
Some of the creatures had been killed and stuffed.

The painted and tattooed Taino Natives didn’t say anything.
They may have been simply grateful that they
hadn’t been killed and stuffed
by these bizarre people who opened their mouths widely
when they spoke
and who took and ate more than what they needed.

Maybe it was they who needed to be killed and stuffed.
But it didn’t work out that way on this particular day.

On the First Puerto Rican Day Parade.

Copyright © 2007 by Bobby González