Poem: Ode to arugula

by Brad Liening, InDigest Magazine • July 25, 2008 • Some people think you are like an average player
in the best basketball league on the planet,
but these people are wrong. You are like
the best sixth man in the league, hot off the bench

with tight D, reinvigorating the flagging team.
You are the secret currency of black markets.
You are a bargaining chip in geopolitical power
struggles, and in this you are like us, only

more important. Occasionally you are in a bag
of spinach and how awesome is that? Spinach
overshadows you too often in supermarkets
and in poems. Someday someone will find

a masculine rhyme for you that is not forced,
as if for you and you alone a new dictionary
had to be invented. You never talk shit
and you’ve never slept with my sister,

both of which spinach did. Instead, you greet me
with coffee and flowers, you let me cry at funerals.
You will line my coffin and someday you will
sprout from my mouth. And because you

are a vegetable, and not at all a human being,
I lie to you, I fuck you over and forget about you,
I don’t care if you love me, and in the morning
you tell me they will never cure cancer.

Arts Orbit is a multisource blog about the local arts scene, featuring both original contributions by Daily Planet writers and entries reprinted from partner blogs and online publications.