It’s always fun to read a poem reminiscing about one’s misspent youth, and this week’s poem by Joe Capista is such a poem. But ultimately, the poem’s language is too self-conscious for me to fully enjoy it.

I like the poem’s central image. Just as the boys misread Playboy’s words, they also misread or misunderstood how easy it would be to have sex with a girl. To these “budding” men, it would be as easy as to peel “satin / from skin” as it was to peel the rind from the clementines they got in their Christmas stockings. Just as they applied “a finger’s / steady pressure” to peel the tangerine-like fruit, so also could they use the same finger, so they imagined, to slip off a girl’s lingerie and enter her (“the split of soft fruit”).

I also like words like “humid,” “loggerheads,” “cryptograms,” candied,” “slipped,” and “skirting,” which evocatively suggest the difference between their fantasies and reality. I like the internal rhyme of “decoding” and “disrobers.” And Capista’s use of “lingered” in the ninth couplet makes a fine subtle comment on how the boys were better at lingering than they were at peeling off lingerie.

But Capista tries too hard, in my opinion, with phrases like “hanks of cigared / tobacco,” “kid-minds / keen to peel,” “slipped in our stockings,” “a year of skirting Satan,” “Nonchalant as bubble gum,” and “we dittoed each / sweet image.” A couple of these artful phrases and alliterations would have been fine, but too many makes me focus too much on the poet’s craft. And, of course, there’s the obligatory and stale reference to Playboy’s unfortunate staples in the middle of their centerfolds with “saddle-stapled.”

Author is dating himself here. You know, Playboy doesn't use staples anymore.

To quote Dave Chappelle, "But nobody remembers that. Because those pages of history are stuck together." (On the frequent affairs of JFK and RFK.)

They're now held together by some kind of binding glue.

More than you ever wanted to know about Playboy's Book of Lingerie --

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Somewhere in the article the author refers to the switch from "flat" to "saddle stitching" for the specials.

except for the smoking reference...it didn't need that.

when i read finger's steady pressure, i thought of clitoral stimulation..and when i read between the folds, i thought of our labia. i don't know if that means the author was winking at the double meaning, but those thoughts did occur to me.

i really liked reading this poem...the feel of the words on my tongue, and the rhythm. all good.

"clementines they got in their Christmas stockings" Doubt this refers specifically to Xmas stockings but the sacks that clementines tend to come in that look like lady's fishnet stockings. But the double meaning is there, yes.

Playboy, men's magazines, were sold in cigar stores. If you take out the winks at double meanings there's not much left, but sometimes a cigar store is just a cigar store.

It's overkill alright. But then it's a punny poem. Too many double entendres for your liking? Fair enough.

Z-B and falcon, it's not the double entendres I object to; they were fun. It's the overly-well-made poetic phrases like "cigared tobacco" and "nonchalant as bubble gum" as well as the frequent alliteration.

However, now that I've read Z-B's take on the poem, I see that I might have missed fully 63 percent of the double entendres in this poem.

Maybe I'm missing the oh-so-subtle ironies on ironies, but I'd omit the last stanza, just end something like this (with apologies to William Carlos Williams for the plums):

it would be for us on those winter

afternoons: flimsy resistance, soft plums.

We'd puzzle over language later.

and so i'm cool with the inclusion.

It's just a playful poem, and boys will play with their Playboys.

You've mentioned about this week's and last week's poems that they're written by adults -- was wondering why you suppose that's a necessary clarification.

You're right, Robert Thomas, the last stanza is superfluous.

But I'm not sure about changing "soft fruit" to "soft plums," since the phrase has to reference the clementines mentioned earlier.

You've mentioned about this week's and last week's poems that they're written by adults -- was wondering why you suppose that's a necessary clarification.

What I think I said, Z-B, is that they both were written from the POV of an adult narrator. I mention that because such a POV assumes a wisdom or detached outlook that an adolescent narrator would not have.

But why do you think that's a necessary clarification?

Agreed on the plums, MaryAnn. Maybe we should just get rid of the fruit altogether! "flimsy resistance, the split." Or something. My question would be whether you need the erotic cliches like "split of soft fruit" (and "things on our hands") to make the point that "Hey, we were just kids! We weren't thinking about language and poetry. Cliches were just fine with us!" But that seems a strained justification ...