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Blood Avocado
by Kristin M. Stein
In the low-boughed trees of Morelia
alligator-green avocados hang,
warm in the balmy Mexican breeze.
The farmer plows, furrows, digs trenches
until his knuckles are bloodied,
his brow wet with salt.
The drug cartel came this morning
wanting their cut—1.86 pesos
for every kilogram of avocados—
last summer he saw them
cut off a woman’s head
because she couldn’t pay.
Her knees buckled under her,
as her body sank to the round.
The price goes up every day.
Nunca es suficiente.
A country away, a woman slices cleanly
on a yellow Formica countertop
and scoops out its pale, buttery flesh,
eating it with a spoon.
Kristin M. Stein is a creative nonfiction writer and poet from upstate New York. She studied creative writing at Pacific University and worked as a copy editor for Pacific’s Literature by Undergraduates Magazine and co-editor for The Beacon and the internationally distributed Silk Road Review. Her work has appeared in Pom Pom Lit and she presented her paper, “Monsters and Madness: The Self as a Monster in the Gothic Novel”, at the 2018 Northwest Undergraduate Conference on Literature. She currently lives in Milwaukie, Oregon with her husband and two dogs. For more information, visit: www.kristinmstein.com
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