A Pure and Perfect Mango

Many of you who know me in real life will be aware of my personal grail quest: the search for the perfect mango. I've eaten just one perfect mango, several close-to-perfect mangoes, and entirely too many terrible mangoes. I just don't have the knack for picking the good ones. But that doesn't stop me from trying.

The one in the photo, which I ate yesterday, was slightly less than perfect. The texture was good: firm, slippery, never stringy (if there's anything that makes my skin crawl more than a stringy mango, I don't know what it is). The flavor was a little off, a little too astringent, perhaps, but I was pleased with it. So pleased that I rushed out to buy four more mangoes from the same box at the same store. We'll see how that pans out.

There was a poem I wanted to quote in relation to mangoes and my often fruitless (ha!) pursuit of them. I know I have read--or heard--this poem somewhere in my past, and I know there is a line about eating a pure and perfect mango. I've been obsessing about it for hours and I think I have narrowed down the poet: Carolyn Forché. I think I attended one of her poetry readings and heard the poem there. It makes me crazy that I can't remember for sure. I pored over my bookshelf and discovered that I do own a book by Ms. Forché: Against Forgetting. Unfortunately, this is a collection she edited, and does not actually contain any of her work. Even the internet is silent on the subject of Carolyn Forché and mangoes.

I'm sure the poem wasn't about mangoes at all, more likely it was a poem about war or civil strife. Yet somehow I remember that one line, the ideal of the pure and perfect mango.