It was mooncake festival.
A friend gave me
a durian mooncake.
I put it in the fridge
and forgot about it.

A week later
I opened the fridge,
to be greeted with a smell
of something rotten.
What could it be?
I searched for the culprit.
The durian mooncake.

There was a nun at the monastery
who came from the Philippines.
No amount of persuasion
or penance
could make her eat durian.
It is akin to eating excretion,
she said.

A fruit that tastes like heaven
for the locals
and smells like hell
for foreigners.

Work the knife along the lines,
tear open the spiky shell,
and within nestle the fruits
in sections
of one, two, three or more.
The one often has a small seed
with a lot of meat.
Get the type
mushy with a bit of bitterness,
and you hit the jackpot.
That is the best.

We ate it,
then gargled our mouths with salt water
before going out.
The repeats of durian
might be added pleasure,
but embarrassing
to wear that perfume.

So strong is the smell,
it was forbidden on airplanes.

One trip to Malaysia,
Fr. Chin, a Carmelite priest,
was entrusted with a bottle of durian.
His friend packed it tightly,
making sure no smell could escape.

Once on the plane,
the stench escaped.
The culprit was asked
to come forward.
Shamefaced,
Fr. Chin revealed the bottle.
Seeing he was a priest,
the stewardess allowed him to keep it.

He told his friend,
never again.
He had once been on a plane
that was hijacked,
and became a celebrity.
That he could appreciate.
But caught smuggling durian?
That he could never live down.

— Trudi Hsu, with Claude