"To a Head of Lettuce" by Amy Gerstler

[View this email on a browser]( [Forward to a friend]( [facebook-icon]( [tumblr-icon]( [twitter-icon]( September 1, 2017 [To a Head of Lettuce]( [Amy Gerstler]( May I venture to address you, vegetal friend? A lettuce is no less than me, so I respect you, though it’s also true I may make a salad of you, later. That’s how we humans roll. Our species is blowing it, bigtime, as you no doubt know, dependent as you are on water and soil we humans pollute. You’re a crisphead, an iceberg lettuce, scorned in days of yore for being mostly fiber and water. But new research claims you’ve gotten a bad rap, that you’re more nutritious than we knew. Juicy and beautiful, your leaves can be used as tortillas. If you peer through a lettuce leaf, the view takes on the translucent green of the newest shoots. Sitting atop your pile, next to heaps of radicchio, you do seem a living head, a royal personage who should be paid homage. I am not demanding to be reassured. I just want to know what you know, what you think your role is—and hear what you have to say about suffering long denied, the wisdom of photosynthesis, stages of growth you’ve passed through. I can almost hear your voice as I pay for you at the cash register, a slightly gravely sound, like Kendrick Lamar’s voice, or early Bob Dylan, both singers of gruff poetic truth. Nothing less was expected from you, sister lettuce, nothing less. [Like this on Facebook]( [Share via Twitter]( Copyright © 2017 Amy Gerstler. Used with permission of the author. [illustration]( About This Poem “That plants are sentient beings too, as more and more research about flora confirms, and that despite this fact, even vegans have to eat something—remains an issue I feel unnerved by, and wrestle with, and then sometimes mock myself for getting caught up in. I was spinning out fantasizing about the feelings of items in the produce section of a grocery store, wondering what it might be like if they could give their feelings voice, and thus began this poem.” —Amy Gerstler Amy Gerstler’s most recent book is Scattered at Sea (Penguin Books, 2015). She teaches in the MFA creative writing program at the University of California at Irvine and lives in Los Angeles. [more-at-poets]( Poetry by Gerstler [Scattered at Sea]( (Penguin Books, 2015) "Private Eye Lettuce" by Richard Brautigan [read-more]( "Lettuce" by Abraham Cowley [read-more]( “Get Used To It” by Margaret Young [read-more]( Help Support Poem-a-Day If you value Poem-a-Day, please consider a [monthly donation]( or [one-time gift]( to help make it possible. Poem-a-Day is the only digital series publishing new, previously unpublished work by today’s poets each weekday morning. The free series, which also features a curated selection of classic poems on weekends, reaches 450,000+ readers daily. Thank you! [Small-Blue-RGB-poets.org-Logo]( Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit [Poets.org](. You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click [here](. © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038 From Our Advertisers [Advertisement]( [Advertisement](