A pineapple is the perfect gift
to bring to a blind date.
A pineapple is like a blind date:
spiky and armored at first,
[5]
with the hope of sweetness inside.
A pineapple is the perfect housewarming gift.
You don’t have to wrap it,
it doesn’t spill inside your car.
It comes in its own house.
[10]
A pineapple is the perfect birthday gift.
You might prefer a coconut,
that planet molten1 at the core,
but the pineapple has a better hairdo,
better wardrobe; it never
[15]
goes out of style.
Think of all those historic houses
with pineapple bolsters,2 pineapple finials,3
pineapples carved above lintels.4
Such a sophisticated5 fruit:
[20]
every sailor wants one.

How is the speaker’s discussion of pineapples’ presence in architecture important to the poem?