Gabriela Mayes

How to Pick Guava

The lawyer’s placid lilt warned you
not to linger in supermarket aisles,
eyes unfocused, fingertips testing limes.

The kid in the cart screamed—
they could grab you when they see your arms
covered in pink clouds, flowers, threats,

send you like a missive,
a machine-stamped life,
while you’re thinking of guavas:

how you’d march to your grandmother’s tree,
straw broom in hand like a war banner, and
smack the branches to summon the fruit rain.

You inspected their green-yellow skin,
hunting for pinholes hidden in scars,
sliced one open with a dull plastic knife,

the guava yielding to the pressure,
ready for the white worm
crawling through the pink flesh.

The second, the third were pulp cocoons.
At what point did you decide to ignore the worms,
cut your way around the holes,

swallow the rest down anyway?

Jabuticaba

I used to think jabuticabas grew everywhere—
little black orbs swelling on trunks and branches,

like sugar tumors growing on bark.
We couldn’t see the horror in the tree grapes.

Now, whenever something ugly and unique happens
in Brazilian politics, they say it’s a jabuticaba—

like only we could find sweetness
blooming in what looks like sickness.

My sister loved jabuticabas.
She’d pluck a couple from trunks on our street,

a handful from fruit stands while mom looked away,
a bushel from the estate our grandparents tended

while the owners were away one January.
She ate them right away,

kept popping them in her mouth
long after she was supposed to stop,

made herself sick just like mom had foreseen.
She tasted the sweetness that covered our bitter lives

and she kept on taking.
That little girl was constipated for days,

keeping in all the uniquely ugly things
of that January when dad left us.