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self-portrait as mango

tarfia faizullah

 

she says, your english is great! how long have you been in our country?

i say, suck on a mango, bitch, since that’s all you think i eat anyway. mangoes

are what ¹ like me know everything about, right? doesn’t

a mango just win spelling bees and kiss white boys? isn’t a mango

a placeholder in a poem folded with burkas? but this one,

the one i’m going to slice and serve down her throat, is a mango

that remembers jungles jagged with insects, the river’s darker thirst.

this mango was cut down by a ² that beheads soldiers, mango

that ³ and suns itself into a hard-palmed fist only a few months

per year, ⁴ while blood stains green ponds. why use a mango

to beat her ⁵? why not a ⁶? because this “exotic” fruit

won’t be cracked open to reveal whiteness to you. this mango

isn’t alien just because of its gold-green bloodline. i know

i’m worth waiting for. i want to be kneaded for ripeness. mango:

my own sunset-skinned heart waiting to be held and peeled, mango

i suck open with teeth. tappai! this is the only way to eat a mango.

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