Jennifer Davis Michael


Wine Tasting

We skim the sommelier’s list

for vintages well-aged or new

and stand, precarious, on the past

even as we imbibe it too.

Tannins from last year’s fallen leaves

stain a palimpsest on our porch,

its floorboards made from plastic sleeves

that once held newspapers or lunch.

Sustainability’s the buzz,

more audible than bees that hover

in early autumn’s fragrant fuzz,

as tasters pause to toast each other.


Jennifer Davis Michael is a professor of English at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. Her poem “Forty Trochees” was selected by Rachel Hadas as the winner of the Frost Farm Prize for Metrical Poetry in 2020. She is the author of two chapbooks from Finishing Line Press: Let Me Let Go (2020) and Dubious Breath (2022), as well as a book of criticism, Blake and the City (Bucknell, 2006).