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How to Do Anything Better
Peggy Perdue

This simple recipe was created for the hungry family—easy, fast, delicious. The secret? Start with what you’ve got:

2 cups boiling water
2 cups cold water
1 box gelatin mix
1 can assorted fruit

To put this meal together for the best presentation, and greatest chances of success, take advantage of all your senses:

1. See your daughter float into the kitchen and turn her face up to the stove.
2. Hear her ask what there is to eat.
3. Smell the toast from this morning’s breakfast that she couldn’t eat because you burned it.
4. Taste the saliva pool on your tongue as you try to answer.
5. Feel the space between your hip bones and ribs.

Finally, make it look effortless:

Tell her you’re making a Jell-O fruit mold. She delights at the idea of dessert for dinner and hops down the hall to her room. She doesn’t need to know until she’s 20 that there was not food enough for tomorrow.

—
Peggy Perdue lives in her own world, where she spends most of her time thinking, tries to raise her son to question the status quo, imagines everything is waaayyy easier than we’re making it, and doesn’t care if everyone believes her ideas are naive. She was a 2017/18 Atheneum Fellow in poetry at the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters in Portland, Oregon. She is currently working on her first book.

Know anyone who might appreciate reading Peggy’s poem?
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Have you read these poems:
In the Cave of Quiet by Debbie K. Trantow
Michigan Bouquet by Craig Cotter

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