Peel

Standing in my dark, galley kitchen, I eat a clementine so sweet it tastes like a popsicle. With my acrylics (almond, blue, iridescent tinge, petite) like tiny oyster shuckers, I can't help but pierce the flesh. When I was a boy with doughy nails, I never used to get into the guts. I'd field dress the poor tangor, pull the skin so precisely, so complete, you'd think I planned to do anything with it. 

I want to start this essay with a joke. That would better serve my purposes. But this is what came to me – a pensive, misshapen metaphor about transness, myself, and this Covid pupation none can escape. Clementines are born wanting their flesh to taste air. 

Besides my life being one shamble after another, the real reason I didn't start with a jok is I'm not funny. I want to be funny: obviously, painfully. But I perform funny more than I am. Like how I perform a poet, or a girl, or an essayist…(what's the lady version of essayist? Diaryer?) Or as an expert clementine deskinner. 

Purely for my ego, let me try one joke because, above all, I perform desperately. 

Ah-hem! 

Which came first?:

     the clementine

     or the pope?

See? Horrible.

...

Jokes and poems are the same things. Let me show you what I mean:

What do you call a depressed Clementine on a late-night walk?

A meanderin' orange

Not as good as mine, but fine. This is an example of a joke. A joke about clementines that I found on the internet. Google search: accomplished. How do I know that this is A Joke™?

Let's start by identifying what components a joke needs to be considered a joke, and compare those components to poetry. For this discussion, the necessary, standard components of a joke will be: 1. the setup, 2. the detail, 3. the punchline. These three basic elements are necessary for us to recognize a speech act as being distinctly a Joke™. 

To compare the two, poetry and the Joke ™, we need to first make some assertions that, while not not hard and fast rules, serve the purpose of this essay. And because I’m annoying, here's a diagram of my Theory ™:

Mapping the basic building blocks of poetry onto our joke components

 Title: By the power vested in me by no one and never will be, I believe the Title of a poem is analogous to the Setup of a joke. I reason the title and a set up serve a very similar function. Both introduce and provide necessary context for the audience as well as invent the piece’s emotional stakes. 

As with a setup, a poem title generates intrigue and causes us to invest emotionally. As with poem titles, when a joke has a lame set up – one of those “hey, what's the deal with my stupid wife I resent and cheat on,” for instance – then the audience will be less likely to care. Without a solid set up or title, it won't matter how good your respective punchline or ending are. In this way jokes and poems teach us the same thing: patience, endurance, fortitude, edging, whatever you wanna call it.

Details: The Details of the joke are similar to the Body of the poem. Fine detail imbues a joke or poem with suspense and texture. As in the “my bitch wife” example, before telling us the horrific punchline, this “comedian” might tell us very specific, innocuous things his wife does that make him resentful that she has agency and curls her hair. Both in a poem and a joke, details answer the question "why does this story need to be told?" Or, in the case of our example of the sexist comedian (that I bet you picture with a ketchup-stained Brooklyn accent) what bitches are good for. A sage in every crowd, huh.

Finally: we come to the Punchline or, as in poetry, the Turn. In both cases, the end is regarded as the seat of meaning. It is the moment when the audience is made to believe that sense can be made of anything. The end is where the audience is elevated, is transported, laughs and cries (respectively), has their state of being changed, challenged. 

So when Dale–competitive ketchup eater by day, crew-cut misogynist by night–ends his joke as he does all his jokes, with his signature catch phrase “I’M MADE EMPTY BY HATE,” we’re treated to the catharsis of laughter solely directed at the 80’s and it's self-inflicted misery.

But the joke I started with? What of that? The ‘meansderin’ Orange? It doesn't really have a title or set up? It sorta leaps you into the detail and brings you immediately to the turn? Why it's adolescence? So unsure of itself that it forgot to give itself a name, a title, a skin? Why do I understand it's a clementine, even with the skin pre-unraveled?

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