Picnic by Moonlight and Mangoes
Jacques Fleury
[Excerpt from Fleury’s Boston Globe featured poetry book Sparks in the Dark: A Lighter Shade of Blue,
A Poetic Memoir archived permanently at the University of Massachusetts’s Healey Research Library]
The night is like a whimper whistling
sweet sounds of the Caribbean dawning
tense taunted memories supple coconut leaves
longing rustling uneasily singing their hissing history
The moon smiling a single icy eye under warm Caribbean skies watching dancing fireflies
Against the starry sky staring soundly shining as if
waiting for a shindig for brave night birds to fly sound is silenced noise needs defiance
fall leaves layer upon layer interwoven to make a motley leafy magenta blanket above the
dirt you walk in like a frumpy flirt picnic basket brimming in big Haitian hands
singing a tune like you in a calypso band
bruised burnished back against the moon I emerge like a boasting butterfly from the cocoon
to see your gesture jesting me than you kneel dumb down by me leaning closer learning me
you placed your lips perched planting a putrid punch-drunk kiss upon me
I could smell your taste like garnished waste tepid against my lucid lanky cheeks
Cheeks as daunting and dazzling as the moon itself than I bury my bumbling quivering hands
Into your buxom basket winced and wrench out a near perfect pound of reddish round mango treat
“go ahead, bite me!”
I hear it sing your beat jesting me testing me vesting me
I look up as if to say to see your burning eyes beaming looking back at me like the moon mauled against
the aching sky you see still staring back at me as if crouching to flee I tilt my head
hanging to the right then I tilt my head hanging to the left
watching your blood bleeding red swollen mango beauty erected!
basking in your basket black memory detected than most carefully
I slant tauntingly toward this your gallant gaudy fruit
rowdy rueful having lost its roots perch and peck
my lips than sank my bucking beak beneath the stuffy skin your juicy fruit dangling drooling
down my chin than I lay my back buried down wincing waiting quietly to hear your
queer croaking rooster sound staring happily into the glare of sensual satiable
Caribbean skies while watching fireflies stock full of colonial flare flying hovering
tired hanging onto the tarry air autumn stifled squirming to breath beneath heavy hung Haitian thighs
You could almost hear its sweaty seethe that I should sing release all Haitian flies!
Oppression deflates exhausted satisfaction sighs…finally anxious desire daring to escape
You’ll find it squandered and spent along the cape then laying back secretly satiated under this tree your ruby red
mangoes falling like loads of glory! raining down on me like a fetish fantasy
And for a second forgetting my wanton woe laying low under your shadow’s fro
Ooooh yes you please me like a pro! i say islander scavenger
feed me your juicy mango flow
As I lay back to bask while your
wise fluid moon glow sow…–
