Kim Sousa
Before the raids begin, I drive to work with a mango in my lap
1.
I drive to work with a mango in my lap like a green lung collapsing.
My grandfather weaving palm fronds into rooves as the Amazon burns.
I peel the mango with my teeth—old and sacred habit—
spill its yellow from mouth to womb. I spit
the mango’s red rubber skin out the window into white neighborhood
after white neighborhood. I invite rot as reparations
for their hard red lines. Earthworms migrate deeper, darker
swollen with rain and blind to borders
as the millipede and beetle grub move this earth—what of it is left.
What can we abolish that they aren’t already at work composting?
On the radio, Drake says, they been tryin’ me, but I’m resilient for real.
And I hear, but I’m Brazilian for real.
And isn’t it the same?
2.
I would wear the mango around my neck like a figa: for luck, for country.
But a mango is a thing you can gift yourself, ignoring
the woman at the checkout counter who asks if you’re trying to decide
which you like best: ataulfo or Tommy Atkins/Haden—
the latter mangoes I have to Google to name. All fiber and long shelf life.
Named for white men in Florida. Really, any other mango would do.
And what the fuck is a champagne mango, anyway. A white mouth
refusing to open for syrupy vowel sounds. A violence
like white hands in wet soil. Their teeth clapping with consonants.
Always dirt never marga, argila, barro.
What they keep they kept from us: our Gods, seeds and sweetness.
My father says he wouldn’t even feed the mangoes we settle for in the US
to the pigs in Brazil awaiting his homecoming.
3.
I drive to work with a mango pit between my teeth like a blade.
I am nectar-stained panic: mammal, animal.
Red light. They will come for us. Green light. This is promised.
Yellow light. Even as we are drowning in the swollen rivers,
they bare teeth like 32 white colonies and call it a smile.
Already, they are coming for us,
having sliced open their own palms to pull the pits from our avocados,
thin lips rashy from our mango skins.
Always, Once or Still, white men sell human fat as a delicacy. From guillotine to gut.
Are these the ancestors they will call upon when the sirens sound?
No, there will be no sirens. Already, the silence.
They will spill out of white vans in riot gear, AK-47’s ready at our spines.
And still, the silence. They will do it in the daylight,
though their skin will burn. And we, interred. Encamped.
Too sick to rattle our cages—too young and dying.
Too old and deported [sic] Removed.
Every mango left heavy on the branch. Every branch breaking.
Yes, I will plant this pit—sure as it will not sprout.
Sure as the soil will open wide her stateless mouth to receive it.
