Have you ever pondered the life of Celery? Come on, admit it, you know you have, you Saucy Minx! Celery is the shy herbaceous wallflower cousin to flashier ‘tables like arugula and cauliflower, with their showy leaves and spikes and flowering veggie nonsense. Deeply introspective wise Celery is often misunderstood. “Straight,” “dull,” “rule-following keener,” they call out as he stalks by. Poor Celery.
But what of the many lovely medicinal applications of this wondrous vegetable? Effective in treating rheumatoid arthritis, cystitis, and (in service to neurotic bloggers everywhere), nervous exhaustion.
Oh Celery, how oft you are misunderstood. Who but the fine poets have fully appreciated your grace?
***
Celery
by Evan Nagle
Sad water
in the cold wet Spring.
She chops the green celery
headless, footless.
The faucet’s shivering aqueduct.
I wake to the cutting
board’s clank, the smell
of butchered plants
on her fingers.
She licks the dislodged
veins that stick
to the knife. The white
plate: a watery
mess. Twelve chilled
bites, severed
from the stalk’s green limb.
*in honor of April, National Poetry Month.
You really need to get off that diet — odes to celery now? What’s next, a song about the boneless chicken breast?
I keed, I keed.
That poem was rather bloodthirsty….
I take issue with “misunderstood”, “shy”, and “dull”. Celery wreaks havoc with me, what with all the tongue-numbing action.
Down with celery! Die, vile weeds, DIE!
I’m not a celery kind of girl, but was drawn in by the most excellent title!
Did you know that if you bring celery to a match being played by my team: Chelsea FC you receive a ban and possibly a criminal conviction.
It all (ahem) stems from the fact that Chelsea supporters have a song:
Celery, Celery
If she don’t cum,
I’ll tickle her bum
With a lump of Celery
(repeat)
At cup games this is accompanied by people throwing tons of celery into the air. Most of it eventually makes its way onto the pitch which is where the ban has come from. At the League Cup Final last month an Arsenal Player was trying to take a corner and was pelted with Celery. This resulted in the Police pointing out that Celery could be a “deadly weapon” (which was news to most of us).