Posts Tagged“wine poetry”

The Dream In Which The Winos Find Their Morals, Draw A Line, And Take A Stand By Christopher Watkins In the dream we are sleeping in the last row of Merlot to the west, before the Cabernet Sauvignon; the air is weaving, lush and humid, as if  we’re on the highway making heat a noun, as in, "Look, you can see the heat above the road." Our feet are to the north, towards the buildings, and there’s a red bird chirping loudly at a brown bird by my head. When I sit up, I see the raccoon scat, pocked with…

By Christopher Watkins In a warm kitchen in Stony Brook,above a heated stove,a bearded chef keeps two eyes fastenedto a metal pot,but the water doesn’t boil. On a platform in Port Jefferson,dampened by the rain,a small, young woman keeps raisingher jacketed wrist to glare againat her watch,but the train doesn’t come. On a grass patch beside the two-lane,just past Wading River,four young men in jeans and capssprawl around a bus stop,trying to make their coffees lastuntil the bus finally arrives. And in a vineyard off Sound Avenue,as tractors hulk in silence in the first hues of the dawn,a sturdy figure…

By Christopher Watkins As if, in opposite corners, our trainers had just told us to “Go out there and get ‘em,” we square off, I on the wine side of the bar, you on the other. What, I wonder, is there in your armor in the way of a weak spot? I speak slowly, but the grim cast never leaves the set-in hardlines of your lips. I move precisely, careful not to tear the foil or break the cork or spill the wine. I marvel at your nose, how it reaches, like a hand, into the deep crimson bowl. I…