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