Hipsters — Summary

Dave BontaCheerful

cold as our black clothes our hands reckon and point

and all night my left testicle aching

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Dave Bonta's "Hipsters" is only a few lines long, but it sets two very different things side by side. The first is a kind of group image: "our black clothes," hands that "reckon and point." The speaker says "our," so he is part of a crowd that dresses alike and talks with confident gestures, as if sizing up the world and passing judgment on it. The word "cold" does double duty here. It suggests the coolness of a fashionable look, and perhaps a chilly, detached attitude too.

Then the poem drops sharply into something awkward and physical: "all night my left / testicle aching." The speaker's body cuts through the pose. The line break after "left" makes the blunt detail land with a small jolt, and it's a bit funny.

The mood is dry and wry. Judging by the contrast, the poem seems to poke at the gap between how people present themselves and what they privately feel, with the speaker noticing his own discomfort underneath the style.

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