In your letter, you spoke with oranges,
and I returned with an apple.
Like I had grown it myself.
Like I could somehow reply to
that sectioned pulp.
"Try this," I suggested.
"The crispness will astonish you.
This will not tear so easily,
nor will it bleed onto your fingers.
Then you sent a tomato.
As if a tomato qualified.
Or perhaps, I thought, for lack
of a plum.
I countered with a prune,
to which you replied with a grape,
which I would have tried to ferment,
had it not dried.
Had it not wrinkled.
Had I not left it too long in the sun.
So I send this banana,
hoping to stay further argument.

Peter Blewett learned how to cook from his late wife, Mary Edge Blewett, whom he lost to Alzheimer’s Disease. Peter moved to Milwaukee in 1981 to be with Mary. They received their PhDs from UWM. Their son Hugh, also a good cook, works as a dresser at Universal Studios.