Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Avocado” by Jessica Lee McMillan.

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Avocado

By Jessica Lee McMillan

I’d just jam a knife in those babies

then salt and dice the flesh around bruises.

before the bossa nova days

I’d dance stone-faced

to Nine Inch Nails in a tight-limbed sea

of elbows. now I crowd-surf Costco,

hunting the big ones with small pits.

in Brazil, they are best

enjoyed with sprinkled sugar

and a spritz of lemon.

so exquisite, you’ll bring your hand

to your lips for a chef’s kiss.

now I look for something soft

in the diminishing sweet.

aim to taste more sunsets

than midnights. knife down,

tongue makes way for more fat

to savour against the stone,

smooth as the eyes curving round

Sugarloaf Mountain to the snug

of Rio, as creamy as João Gilberto’s

Portuguese in the cochlear.

which brings this back to me:

the buttery flesh with a heart

rounding off. becoming the give

of a ripe fruit in open palm.

I dream for that ratio

of flesh-to-pit. a stone married

to a soft shell humming in gentle shadow.

a sugarloaf monolith lapped by sea.

I’m bossa nova and swimming

in Guantabara Bay where sunset

always brings some sugar.

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Copyright © Jessica Lee McMillan

Previously published in Crab Creek Review, 2023.

Jessica Lee McMillan (she/her) is a poet and teacher with an MA in English and Creative Writing Certificate from Simon Fraser University’s The Writer’s Studio. Read her recent/forthcoming poems in The Malahat Review, QWERTY, The New Quarterly, Canadian Literature, Consilience, Funicular, and Rose Garden Press. Jessica lives on the land of the Halkomelem-speaking Peoples (New Westminster, BC) with her little family and large dog.

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