z

Young Writers Society



Pineapples

by Cairo


bright
yellow
pineapples

on a blue background: this
is how i will remember our first sober day together.

i hated that pineapple shirt,
almost regretted agreeing to meet you,
a man i had just bumped into on the street
on a dark night out in a lazy dress and high heels,
the clouds crying a slow, steady drizzle.

the sun was hot on our backs
as we sipped on salty cocktails -
to ‘loosen up,’ you said,
which was exactly the same explanation you had
for taking two more drinks and many more shots
in the middle of the day.

and probably,
this was the same thing on your mind
when you decided to wear that stupid shirt.

in hindsight,
it fit you: whimsical and totally uncaring,
you chose to show up unpolished and laughing

a stark contrast to my shaking figure,
nervously checking the area around me,
my eyes constantly lifting to scan the balconies
of the building next to the bar, wondering:
did you notice?

of course not.

do you remember
when that van pulled up next to us
with a man at the wheel?

‘he’s staring,’ i whispered
and you laughed and waved to the man,
who returned your gesture with a wink
and a thumbs up.

i fell in love with the way you brazenly accepted the world around you
and maybe you fell in love with the way i resisted it.

i haven’t seen you wear
that pineapple shirt since that day,
and sometimes i wonder if maybe you wore it
to see if i could accept you fully,
up-front, all at once.

that night you were out of town
when i bumped into him on the street
for the first time since the night i met you.

i remembered that pineapple shirt

and the stupid look on your loving face and

and

well,

i wish i could say it stopped me.

[this is my pineapple shirt]

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User avatar
621 Reviews

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Reviews: 621

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Sun Sep 27, 2015 3:50 am
Rook wrote a review...



Hi again Cairo!

I loved this poem. You know, I think your poems could all go very well into a book or something. They're all so polished, and they have very similar themes.

I loved the pineapple shirt and what it represents. I love the ending, and I love that I actually (think I) understood it. This poem is laying it all up front, like a confession of who this person was.

a man i had just bumped into on the street
on a dark night out in a lazy dress and high heels,

I love your description of the dress. "lazy" just seems so right there. But as it is now, it sounds like the man was the one in the dress and heels, and for some reason I get the feeling that's not true.

I was wondering why the man in the car was staring. Was there something strange about their situation? Were they sitting at a classy place and he was wearing the pineapple shirt?

The beginning was also a really great hook.

I found it interesting that it was their first sober day too. I was interested how many other times they had met already drunk and such. I don't know if that could add to the poem, but I was curious...

That's all I have to say. I really enjoyed this poem, and found it pretty solid. I hope this review helps!
Keep writing!
~fortis




Cairo says...


The man in the poem is a very real person, and you just prompted an image of him in a dress into my mind. Thank you for that. Made me laugh! I`ll definitely take a look at that to make sure it`s punctuated better, so that we understand who is wearing the dress.

I tend to be a bit ambiguous in my writing and like for you to draw your own conclusions, so I`m glad that this prompted some questions from you! Like I said, I may add more detail to it later on but I`m such a bad editor I may never get to it.

Thanks for the feedback though! I`ve been thinking about trying to make an anthology of poetry, since most of my poetry does follow this style and theme, I`m just such a sporadic writer haha!

Thanks again.

-Cairo



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271 Reviews

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Fri Sep 11, 2015 1:04 pm
Gravity wrote a review...



Heya, Gravity here to do a quick review!
So Lightsong already did a better review than I ever could because I'm really good at structuring poetry and analyzing technicalities, but not meanings. I thought your metaphorical use of the pineapple shirt was interesting, but I didn't understand what it meant.

In the beginning, I honestly thought that someone was going to take advantage of the narrator. Especially when I saw that drinking was involved. I wondered who the man in the van was. And in the end when the narrator says "i wish i could say it stopped me" I wondered "from doing what? Did she kiss the man or sleep with him? Or hurt him? Or maybe she just turned her back and walked away?" I just wasn't sure.

Anyhow, I like your use of punctuation, or rather the lack thereof. I like the overall feel it gave to the poem as well as how it's structured. Like I said, I'm great at analyzing those things. It honestly just makes this poem - oddly enough, seem more professional. I know that's an odd way of looking at things but I can literally smell the pages of the textbook that this poem will be in one day. It's weird, idk why I even just said that but I'm too lazy to go back and edit and make me sound like I'm not as weird as I really am...

Anyway, great poem and happy writing!
-Gravity




Cairo says...


Thank you for the review! I appreciate the positive feedback!

It`s a bit of an ambiguous poem, best to draw your own conclusions haha. I may think about putting in some more details at a later time but honestly I`m the worst editor, basically ever.

Thanks again.



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472 Reviews

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Reviews: 472

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Thu Sep 10, 2015 3:18 am
Lightsong wrote a review...



Hey, I'm here to review! :D I've read your other poems, actually, but they were so deep I was afraid I couldn't give an adequate review. >.> This one seems to be the easiest to understand to me. :D

Okay, first is the suggestions (which aren't many since your poem is so good >.>) ;

Spoiler! :
on a dark night out in a lazy dress and high heels,


See, you've given me a vivid imaginary of the heels but not the dress. I have an inkling of what the dress look like but I'm not sure about it and that kind of disrupt my reading. Maybe you need another descriptor that can better tell me what the lazy dress looks like.

and you laughed and waved to the man,


Okay, there's nothing wrong with this line but I think it needs some transition. At one time he's laughing at the persona and at the other, he waves to the man. There should be something in between that marks the process of him lifting his attention to the man.


Next, the actual meaning of the poem;

Love, love, love it. I just like how you use the pineapple shirt as the metaphor, something that resembles spontaneity and lack of worriness to the surrounding, something that makes you free. I like the contrast personality of the persona and the man wearing pineapple shirt. Their chemistry is just well done through the persona's words how she hates the pineapple shirt but like how it makes the guy looks.

Also, the ending! The spaces you take to build in the suspense of what's coming and the words in the square brackets just make it perfect. We are given the hope that the persona might stop from continuing whatever she has in mind with the flashback or the thought of the pineapple guy but she doesn't! And the "this is my pineapple shirt" seems to me indicate how she dismisses her worries of the surrounding accepts brazenly the world around him. :)

Well, that is my interpretation, anyway, which is open to faults and errors. >.> This poem is still nicely done at the end with just the perfect amount of emotion you've poured into it. Keep up the excellent job! :D




Cairo says...


Hey Lightsong. That's awesome that you read my other poems, I'm glad you decided to review this one!

In my mind the dress itself was never very important but if reading it seems off, I'll try to find a way to incorporate more description.

I agree with your comment about the line "and you laughed and waved to the man," because it also reads a bit off to me. I'm not sure if it's transitioning or just word choice but I'll definitely have to find a way to rework it. Thanks for mentioning that actually, I wasn't sure if I was just tired and confused by my own writing, or if it was really off.

Your interpretation of it is interesting! It's not entirely the context I had in mind when I wrote it but I'm happy that that's what you took out of it. I'm glad the pineapple shirt metaphor worked out because I was pretty nervous about it. I'm not very good at writing about things that seem so arbitrary or whimsical as pineapples.

Anyway, thanks again. I really appreciate the feedback.

-Cairo




But even the worst decisions we make don't necessarily remove us from the circle of humanity.
— Wes Moore, The Other Wes Moore