How to Steal an Avocado
Notice: someone has left
an avocado delivery truck
parked just here on a San Jose street.
If no one is looking, kick off your stilettos,
clamber up, sit cross-legged
among the cardboard crates mounding with fruit.
From the corkscrew in your purse, fashion a blade
to breach the leathery skin, a tender little violence
for quick reward.
And there in the truck’s deep cool mouth, realize –
you are not unlike these alligator pears
which could not ripen on the vine.
How lucky that once plucked free, they found you
walking on a palm-lined avenue,
hungry.
Notice: someone has left
an avocado delivery truck
parked just here on a San Jose street.
If no one is looking, kick off your stilettos,
clamber up, sit cross-legged
among the cardboard crates mounding with fruit.
From the corkscrew in your purse, fashion a blade
to breach the leathery skin, a tender little violence
for quick reward.
And there in the truck’s deep cool mouth, realize –
you are not unlike these alligator pears
which could not ripen on the vine.
How lucky that once plucked free, they found you
walking on a palm-lined avenue,
hungry.
