Tresha Faye Haefner
Tasting Room
I ask for a bottle of balance.
The girl behind the counter tongues a grape.
Slides a glass across the counter.
The men make their awkward charm at her,
elbow me back behind the napkins.
At thirty my youth has fermented.
Cities oaked and barreled behind me.
All year I’ve been saving up for this trip.
Birds sleep, sweet in their excuses.
The red barn fattens over the vineyard.
Outside this tasting room,
a woman with an easel paints what she sees.
We inside become the black opening
to a building. Our stories the opaque counterpoint
to all that light setting the field aflame.
Tresha Faye Haefner’s poetry appears, or is forthcoming in several journals and magazines, most notably Blood Lotus, Blue Mesa Review, The Cincinnati Review, Five South, Rattle, TinderBox, and Up the Staircase Quarterly. Her work has garnered several accolades, including the 2011 Robert and Adele Schiff Poetry Prize, and a 2012, 2020, and 2021 nomination for a Pushcart. Her book, When the Moon Had Antlers was published by Pine Row Press in 2023. She teaches poetry at The Poetry Salon. Find out more at ThePoetrySalonstack.substack.com
