Poem Playboy, August 1978 by Jara Jones

Playboy, August 1978 by Jara Jones

Your eyes don't first discover the man on the cover.
He's just a pair of white tuxedo pant legs a woman uses to wrap her frame in place.
He could be a pole, or a wall.
Inside, in the magazine that aroused the erotic cells exactly thirty years ago,
(the small and quiet history of your birth)
there is that palpable sentiment of desire, the yearning to fill one's belly with the hot and soothing liquor of culture.
Men chew a wide, fantastic grin offering Camel cigarettes, mug at the camera as their adjust their mirrors in their contoured Datsun compact car.
Showing off their lime green life vests as they test out jet skis for a photo shoot, or standing awkwardly in brown chino pants, it's clear they are serious about leisure.
A Sears and Roebuck gray corduroy jacket hangs off the shoulder of a blond, bearded male, a jacket just like the one your father wore, after the Navy and before the soft gestures that led to your life.
The collar resembles a wing of some large, clumsy bird, and the breast pockets are fastened with simple brass rivets.
More than the models, with their flat eyes, their acres of curly, resplendent pubic ferns, and their ripe, tanned flesh-shapes, you longed for that jacket.
You aspired for that artifact, that costume, that hairstyle or talisman that could give you a backstage pass into adult sophistication.

Jara Jones is the sort of chap who'd stab you in the throat. With a paper clip, and a little determination. Or maybe he'll make you some pancakes. Hard to say, really. He thinks good poems should be like hand grenades: brutish, violent, and quick.

© 2010 Jara Jones, All Rights Reserved