Banana Poem Phone at Peel Soft Serve

A project by Mario the Maker.

Go bananas for poetry all month long at Peel in Miami Shores with the O, Miami Banana Poem Phone! Dial a real number on a landline telephone, wait for the line to ring, then get served up a sweet, silly, or surprising banana poem from the O, Miami archive. Every number dialed leads to a poem—and some numbers hide surprises! See below for more.

The Banana Poem Phone is an apeeling poetry device created by O, Miami with Mario the Maker for the 2026 Poetry Festival. It’s made with a Raspberry Pi Pico, Mini MP3 module, a landline phone, and banana poems written by South Florida residents, sourced from the O, Miami poetry archive.

How It Works
1. Lift the handset — hear a dial tone
2. Dial a 7-digit number — hear DTMF touch tones
3. If the number is in the phonebook — hear ringing, then the mapped poem plays
4. If not — hear ringing, then a random O, Miami poem plays
5. Hang up at any time to reset!

Easter Eggs

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Mario the Maker is a dad of 4, maker, Cuban hot sauce maker, entrepreneur, and the producer of Maker Faire Miami.

Peel Soft Serve gives perfectly good bananas a second life. Sourced from fruit that never makes it to grocery shelves due to cosmetic imperfections, Peel transforms perfectly edible bananas into creamy soft serve. Made with just two ingredients: bananas and coconut milk, Peel is simple, intentional, and delicious. Peel composts nearly 1,000 pounds of banana peels each week, closing the loop on food waste. Made from scratch by people who care deeply about what we eat and the planet we share.