:
Peter Kfrkpatrick
TIlE MANGO SUCKERS
That first morning the Mango Suckers discovered their beloved fruit hung
wonderfully untouched on trees in the main street.
The pubs were still shut so they set to work
sucking those sweet-smelling breasts till their tongues turned yellow and the pubs opened. Next day
that town's mango bounty made even the shortestjaunt a journey Into Lotos Land which left strips
of lip-damp skin and seeds like flattened testes sucked hairy by the highway, alongside cane toads re-run over into templates of themselves.
But on the third day greed gave way and mangoes became as plain as anything that had not been mangoes two days ago. Meantime the sun had ripened
their own white skins to pink and gold, and couples amongst them had begun sucking each other under slow ceiling fans in the hot nights as it rained - and dark leaves rustled and bobbing branches rocked and shuddered to deliver up their soft delicious bodies, till they lay there like windfalls and like wood.
When they came home perhaps they'd tell their friends how good the swimming was if you could get out to the Reef, and about the heat, and the cane toads.
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