Although I love all fruits,
I need one that looks like a fellow.
So, give it to me long and yellow
With chocolate and marshmallow
or grown organically
and cut up in my bowl of Wheaties.
I’ll eat one for breakfast, I’ll eat one for lunch.
I’ll eat bananas ripe by the whole Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch.
Ladies never reject a banana, even if it’s bent.
If God made man in his image, then the banana was truly heaven sent.
I wish I could grow bananas. I would start a banana plantain-tion.
Bananas made Andy Warhol and Velvet Underground famous
for more than fifteen minutes!
Some people cannot resist the sight of a banana and they start to flirt.
If that doesn’t work for you, then Google Josephine Baker’s banana skirt!
Fuck Hannah Montana, give me Bananas in Pajamas!
Knock Knock
(Who’s there?)
Banana
(banana who?)
Banana split and ice creamed,
when the banana I was about to eat began talking to me,
“My wife left me for some nuts,
A monkey ate my best friend.
And my kids started a cult called House of Bread.
Hopefully you are allergic to me,
I’m not brown enough to be dead!
So, please Aaron Hopkins-Johnson, sir, don’t eat me.
I have a tough enough life already.”
And I smiled at the banana,
before I turned him into a smoothie,
“That’s right bitch, this is manifest destiny.”
I didn’t stop there, I continued my conquest.
I formed a country and named it the Banana Republic.
I’ll defend my country from invaders like OJ Simpson,
Strawberry Shortcake and Johnny Appleseed with guns
loaded with huge bullets I call banana slugs.
So, if you love me, for X-mas you’ll get me two bananas.
After I am done eating them I will thank you by giving you a pair of slippers.
Low in fat and high in fiber.
Ring, ring, ring, ring Bananaphone gives a penetrating look on 1-900-numbers.
Just because I eat bananas, it doesn’t have to mean I am queer…
The average American eats 150 bananas a year.
Repeat after me, “Give it to me long!”
Help me chant every high school cheerleader’s favorite song:
Go! Bananas! B-A-N-A-N-A- ese!
Los plátanos son la mejor fruta!
and I’m going to ride this truck
until the muthafuggin’ peels fall off!
From: Chainsawsmoking: Poems Wrapped in Cellophane
Summary
“Bananas” by Aaron Hopkins-Johnson is a poem centered on love and relationships, music, mortality and loss. The poem develops its subject through recurring images and shifts in emotional pressure rather than reducing the experience to a single statement.
Analysis
Voice
A personal, first-person speaker combines recollection with direct emotional address.
Style and form
The poem is musically inflected, first-person. The poem moves by accumulation: images, references, and tonal turns build on one another, so meaning emerges from their relationships as much as from narrative sequence.
Themes and imagery
Its strongest thematic currents include love and relationships, music, mortality and loss. Concrete images give those abstractions physical weight, while changes in diction and pace keep the poem from settling into a single emotional register.
Reading the poem
A productive way to read “Bananas” is to watch how its images change function as the poem progresses. Details that initially establish scene or memory become emotional evidence. The result is a poem whose argument is carried through association, rhythm, and image as much as through explicit statement.
Explore this poem
Source & rights
Source: Chainsawsmoking: Poems Wrapped in Cellophane (Lawn Gnome Publishing, 2016)
Rights: © 2016 Lawn Gnome Publishing. All rights reserved.