Shredded Lettuce
BY Lucy Van
I.
Acid House? ’88? I was there! I was there all night! Precious Adonis is nearly dead and how should I proceed? Snotting, skirt off, folded, unfolded, stoned. On the ground, beating ground, there all night. They were there all night! Shredding their dresses.
In the bottom of our fridge we have this collection of vegetables. A bag of carrots: Jack Rabbit premium carrots, Produce of Australia. 1kg net. There is a picture of the Jack Rabbit wearing a tracksuit, backward cap and what look like shell toes? What does it mean (to quote, as I probably always do, Magic Steven).
A bag of the green beans we collected at the fruit and vegetable shop. The bag says: we are for the environment. Biodegradable bag. 100% recyclable. The green beans are turning brown and I throw the whole package, green beans and bag, into a garbage bin that is 100% destined for landfill. There is a plastic sleeve of mint and the bag says, sweet & cool mint. Pairs perfectly with Middle Eastern and South Asian cuisine. A must for peas or Freshen up a classic seasonal fruit salad. Use fresh, perfectly versatile. Grown in Australian. Film return to store. For more information on recycling visit woolworths.com.au/recycling.
I don’t remember what the occasion was now but I do remember that some time last year Steven Harris, whose other name is Magic Steven, met a small group of us at the Edinburgh Castle for a beer. It must have been some sort of occasion because we are kind of basically asocial these days. I do remember commenting to Magic Steven or Steven Harris about how I always introduce him by his full name and he said, yeah, people usually talk about you by your full name too, Lucy Van. A satisfied pause, full of something neither of us could or did identify. That day at the pub I noticed I kept saying negative things, like I brought up that Four Corners story about the recycling system in the eastern states of Australia being completely fucked up and broken. Fucked up and broken means not working. Not working in this context of the management of recyclable materials. I talked about how huge warehouses full of glass and paper and these kinds of things, such things are considered recyclable things, are just sitting there throughout the states of Victoria and New South Wales and have been since 2018 because it’s considered too expensive to actually recycle these things now that we can’t sell them to China or Indonesia was it, I talked about how big these warehouses are, how vast they are, how many there are, I talked about how that Four Corners episode was broadcast several years ago (how vast they are, how many there are) and how no one ever seemed to talk about it ever again and how I guess those warehouses are still sitting there and I guess there are even more than there ever were before now and valiantly Magic Steven made some kind of humorous observation about the underlying theme of what I kept talking about and even though I can’t remember what that was I just think that is just classic Steven Harris even though I don’t even know him very well.
That day at the pub I may have questioned the efficacy of the scheme then run by the two major supermarkets in this country, which is Australia, also known as Oz, which I like actually, the proper noun Oz, not Australia, and not Coles and not Woolworths, well, maybe Woolworths a bit, I questioned whether those soft plastics from grocery shopping and packaging that many of us saved and returned to the store to be recycled might not actually be sitting around the state in similar warehouses in a system similarly fucked up and broken and not working and when a few months later there was front page news about how that was exactly what was happening, that this had indeed been going on for many years, or rather not going on for many years, and the big clear bins at the front of Woolworths and the big red bins at the front of Coles were taken away, and we all started throwing our plastic back in the garbage bin, like how I just did with my green beans and mint, I felt vindicated and pleased with myself, as if being right about something like this made anything different or as if Magic Steven would be proud of me. Actually, I think that might have been my birthday that day in the pub, which George inexplicably said he wasn’t coming to, and where I wondered how long I had sucked at parties when Steven Harris suddenly had to leave.
In the bottom of our fridge there is also a bag of lettuce. The bag says Coles Australian Baby Gem Lettuce Anthony Staatz of Fresh Select proudly growing lettuce for Coles since 1998. There is a photograph of a man wearing a shirt with short sleeves. The man has his hands on his hips. The exposed parts of his arms are brown. He smiles for the camera and I guess he is Anthony Staatz cos behind him stretch rows of lettuces, lettuces I guess he has grown there for Coles since 1998. I don’t know where there is. The lettuces appear in full sun, the shadowless patch of the photograph making them immortal; Staatz is partially-immortal, with partial shadow crossing his face. The bag also says Australian grown with a little logo of a kangaroo on a green triangle. The bag says 3 pack and the bag says best before: 15.03.2023. It also says FF002. I understand everything on this bag except FF002. I am surprised about what the bag doesn’t say, which is that the lettuces these were once cos lettuces. I’m kinda proud of us cos there is only one of these little cos lettuces left, meaning that we actually ate and used the vegetable we bought for its intended purposes, unlike the case of the green beans and the mint. Also proud of us cos the date is March 19 and we’re still at it with the last lettuce, it still has a future here, a sandwich future, thanks to being stored carefully in its bag in the drawer for vegetables in the bottom of our fridge.
In his book Border Districts Gerald Murnane has this section where he talks about women his mother’s age preparing a salad. It’s a memory report—the salad section and I guess the book it sits in—the author is giving the reader a report of what it was like to watch those women his mother’s age in the kitchen, cutting the tomatoes on a chopping board, sliding the pieces of wet tomato through their fingers into the bowl, popping some of these sliding pieces into their own open mouths. I’m paraphrasing because even though I’ve been looking through my copy of Murnane’s book on and off for a couple of days I can’t find this section about making a salad anywhere. I remember that the point of the memory was that to a young boy, the sight of women his mother’s age preparing and eating salad vegetables with their bare fingers and their mouths was revolting.
I guess it’s kind of cool that I can’t retrieve the passage cos that’s kind of the recurring motif in the book anyway, Murnane’s book of recalling but not retrieving things from books. I don’t know why I think it’s cool to beat match with Gerald Murnane but hey next time I see Brendan Casey maybe he’ll explain it to me. I mention Brendan Casey because he seems to know a lot about Murnane. He’s also another guy I don’t know very well that I thought I’d mention in this poem. Yeah, that’s right, this is a poem. I’m pretty sure that Murnane scene also had lettuce in it, iceberg lettuce to be precise, the most maligned and therefore edgiest of them all. Most maligned lettuce, that is, not most maligned Murnane scene. Although maybe I’m going there on the scene too, though every sheet of that Murnane books seems to me the same as I leaf through it, as if similarity itself was the driving point. As if similarity itself was the driving point. As if similarity itself was the driving point.
The scene with the women his mother’s age making the salad was a scene about ritual. Especially if Murnane didn’t know this. Even if Murnane didn’t know this, he still knew this, and dealt with it with his apotropaics. Even if I can’t find the scene. Especially if I can’t find the scene. Beatrix Potter knew this and had lettuce magic in her pages on the rabbit children of Benjamin Bunny in the book, The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies, who I thought it was interesting that she didn’t individually name. Funny how that ungrammatical sentence makes more sense than its grammatical equivalent, ‘whose anonymity I thought of interest,’ or whatever the fuck it should be. Grammar surely the system surely fucked up and broken. Surely Potter was an anarchist with her baked-in hatred of land-owning plot-improving rake-wielding Mister McGregor and her veneration of hard-up foraging improvident cheerful layabout Benjamin Bunny and his syllogistically referenced Flopsy children, who follow their dad into McGregor’s rubbish heap where they find among old jam pots and paper bags and lawn mowings and rotten vegetable marrow—oh joy!—‘a quantity of overgrown lettuces, which had “shot” into flower.’ It is so important that they had shot into flower. Potter begins her story like this: ‘It is Said that the effect of lettuce is “soporific.”’ It is Said since Sappho, since before Sappho, since Mesopotamia, since before Mesopotamia, before, before, before, since women first desired and grieved and slept, that lettuce is strong stuff. Priapic, that is, similar to the rise and the fall of the phallus. What is similar? What is similarity?
Among the old jam pots of Oxyrhynchus, the area of the Nile valley where British excavations began around 1870, thousands of poem fragments sleep. Or they sleep in the archives that received the excavated papyri, soporific caches waiting to be processed. One day, a woman at the library will transcribe this:
‘Kytherea, precious
Adonis is nearly dead.
How should we proceed?’
‘Come girls, beat your fists
Down upon your breasts
And shred your dresses.’
Shred your dresses. Shred your lettuces. Everyone, shred, snot over and get a little stoned on your lettuces. In the meantime, bluebottles buzz, a mouse picks over the jam pots, and McGregor’s hands appear in the illustrated image at the top right-hand corner of the page, holding the sleeping bunnies, dropping them into his sack. They dream their mother is turning them over in bed and do not wake up. The mouse rescues the bunnies and their parents replace them with three rotten vegetable marrows and two decayed turnips.
II.
‘Lettuce leaves,’ she said, fetching it to me with full hands.
A woman his mother’s age turns in Murnane’s kitchen. I’m trying to strike a balance. Every single day. I’m trying to utilise. I’m not sure what that balance should be. Earth-acid flows, mounts the roof that no one, least of all Murnane, knew was up there. Up there she goes, where she grows her lettuce in high summer only to watch it shoot to flower and die. Down there she goes, where she brings the dead lettuce in its broken pot fragment to the ground. It is a kind of answer that is the only answer: reverse epithalamium, my sulking jumper, no honey on no finger.
Yes! the lettuce is fragile and has a bed. Yes! it has big veins and gives full head. Yes! it has a heart.
Yes! it has a skirt.
‘Lettuce leaves,’ she said, as if attempting some generality.
Acid House! ’88! Was I there all night? Was I there? On the outskirts: Precious Adonis is nearly dead and how should I proceed? Snotting, skirt off, folded, unfolded, stoned. On the ground, beating ground, there all night. They were there all night! Shredding their dresses. Drinking their puddles. (Mourning is magic, vegetable god.) Only answer. Answer: the time worked out. (Fucked up, broken, not working.) How should I preside? Sweating, screaming, falling down.
‘Lettuce leaves,’ she said. Answer: lettuce leaves. I’m kinda proud of us cos there is only one of these little cos lettuces left, meaning that we actually ate and used the vegetable we bought for its intended purposes, unlike the case of the green beans and the mint. Also proud of us cos the date is March 19 and we’re still at it with the last lettuce, thanks to being stored carefully in its bag presiding in the drawer for vegetables in the bottom of our fridge.
Adonis lays in the lettuce. How many they are, how vast they are. Yoked to the belated harvest: again, again, again! Falling in leaves, covered in leaves, lettuce leaves: again! I will see you there. You will be there now.
Lucy Van writes poetry and essays. Her poetry has appeared in publications including Debris, Cordite Poetry Review, Australian Poetry Journal, The Suburban Review, Rabbit, Axon and Best of Australian Poems. Her first poetry collection, The Open, was longlisted for the Stella prize, shortlisted for the Mary Gilmore award, and highly commended in the Anne Elder award.