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Writer's pictureThe Red Wheelbarrow Poetry

Ode to the Mango

Lara Kirsten


Oh Mango!

i just ate the best specimen of you today

i can die a thrilled and exhilarated human being!

Oh Mango – delightful sister in the Anacardiceae family –

you are soil sun forest and nectar gloriously fused

there is no other fruit like you

you bring out proud and unashamed selfishness in me

i want to eat you all alone

you are made to be eaten in your exotic entirety

juicy and messy

even when i slice off your skin

i dig my teeth inside each peel

to run the very last sweetness of

your exquisiteness over my tongue

i can only be so patient and civilised

soon i throw the knife clatteringly into the basin

i grab hold of you with my two adoring hands

Oh Mango!

i sink my teeth deep

thrusting close closer and closest to your heart

i suck and pull at your clinging fibres

there is a leafiness

an earthiness

a primordial forestiness

that nestles in your flesh

i try to capsule your inimitable aroma with my tongue

i want to shackle you to my throat

you are sweet sun incarnate

oh drip down my throat forever and ever

let my uvula turn into the branch of a tree from

where you can hang your volcanic flavour and

lava over the voraciousness of my ravishing

Oh Mango!

you have gravitas

you have presence

you have boldness

you have splendiferous explosiveness

when i peel you it is like pulling the trigger from a grenade

but the explosion is not bloody and damaging

it is healing binding connecting

my every tissue into a wholeness of harmony

i do not dismay when the fibres cling between my teeth

i do not grab for the floss

i let the last signs of mango

turn my teeth into flying buttresses and

my tongue into singing spires

Oh Mango!

you make my mouth rise

like a grand cathedral from

your radiant revelations


Ode to the Mango


Oh Mango!

i just ate the best specimen of you today

i can die a thrilled and exhilarated human being!

Oh Mango – delightful sister in the Anacardiceae family –

you are soil sun forest and nectar gloriously fused

there is no other fruit like you

you bring out proud and unashamed selfishness in me

i want to eat you all alone

you are made to be eaten in your exotic entirety

juicy and messy

even when i slice off your skin

i dig my teeth inside each peel

to run the very last sweetness of

your exquisiteness over my tongue

i can only be so patient and civilised

soon i throw the knife clatteringly into the basin

i grab hold of you with my two adoring hands

Oh Mango!

i sink my teeth deep

thrusting close closer and closest to your heart

i suck and pull at your clinging fibres

there is a leafiness

an earthiness

a primordial forestiness

that nestles in your flesh

i try to capsule your inimitable aroma with my tongue

i want to shackle you to my throat

you are sweet sun incarnate

oh drip down my throat forever and ever

let my uvula turn into the branch of a tree from

where you can hang your volcanic flavour and

lava over the voraciousness of my ravishing

Oh Mango!

you have gravitas

you have presence

you have boldness

you have splendiferous explosiveness

when i peel you it is like pulling the trigger from a grenade

but the explosion is not bloody and damaging

it is healing binding connecting

my every tissue into a wholeness of harmony

i do not dismay when the fibres cling between my teeth

i do not grab for the floss

i let the last signs of mango

turn my teeth into flying buttresses and

my tongue into singing spires

Oh Mango!

you make my mouth rise

like a grand cathedral from

your radiant revelations


(published in This Recurrence of Light, Ecca, 2022)


Featured at The Red Wheelbarrow on 4 August 2022 as one of the Ecca poets


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