Bonta starts with a familiar comparison, the red pepper as a heart, and then picks it apart. The pepper is really more like a lung, he says, hollow and "full of naught." Its seedy top is often already rotting. It can't pump anything, and its plumpness has nothing to do with love. The last complaint is the funniest: it's red, and it's a pepper, yet it isn't even hot.
The speaker sounds like a mock-serious critic, checking a cliché against the evidence and finding it wanting. The tone is dry and playful, but there's a small sting underneath. The things the pepper lacks, such as warmth, force, and feeling, are exactly what we expect from a heart. The poem suggests that looking like something isn't the same as being it, and that a comparison can be pretty without being true. The mood is light and wry, with a hint of disappointment in how the poem ends.