Mckendy Fils-Aimé

Paté

i hate rush hour, but i endure gridlock
in the belly of a boston suburb to buy paté
at a new haitian bakery. the new haitian bakery
is, in fact, haitian. no one there cares
about my english or how i order
in broken kreyol because it’s still kreyol.
i whisper ou gen paté poul ak viande bef?
as if a low voice can hide poor syntax.
in my second language, i am a boy
again, shy & timid, but excited to eat
both beef & chicken paté like i did once,
when i still relied on my mother & father
to be harbingers of small pleasures,
& i rummaged through the pastry boxes
or brown bags that survived the hour drive
my parents would make from mattapan–
& the only haitian bakery within a hundred miles–
to manchester. i’d bite into each paté,
never noticing the fawn-coloured flakes
falling away, descending onto my shirt
or, like seeds of a wind-kissed dandelion,
floating slowly towards the ground.
i was fluent in kreyol. i am fluent
in speaking english when i shouldn’t,
but today, in a rare & awkward moment, i don’t.
the clerk watches my tongue turn like a key
in the ignition of a car that’s been sitting
when she says nou pa gen okenn paté
viande bef: we don’t have any more beef
paté. & i ask èske m ka achte yon paté morui?
can i buy a codfish paté? & she replies oui
& nearby a patron nods, as if to say, good choice.

Mckendy Fils-Aimé is a New England-based Haitian-American poet, organizer, and educator. He is a former artist-in-residence for MassLEAP and the Art Alliance of Northern New Hampshire. Fils-Aimé is a Callaloo Creative Writing Fellow and a 2024 Granite State Poetry Prize finalist. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Acentos Review, Bellingham Review, The Shore, The Journal, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.