“The Woman You Love Cuts Apples for You” by Patrick Rosal (CRF 2019) was selected by Reginald Dwayne Betts (Incoming Writing Fellow 2023) to be featured in the New York Times Magazine. Reflecting on the poem, Betts says:
“I first read this poem years ago, having never imagined that a person might dip apples into sea salt and vinegar. And years later, I swear, a woman would teach me how tajin turns a green apple into something spectacular. We were standing outside an Arizona prison, and I didn’t believe there was anything to be discovered in a prison parking lot. Reading Rosal’s poem again made me pull out some tajin, and slice some apples, and remember how poems create a heart’s history and remind us of home.”
Read the poem here.
Illustration by R. O. Blechman.