Riesling Poem by Lisa Russ Spaar

Ancestral slosh, black forest
of bridge trestles, syrupy rivers of South Jersey,
O Lutheran, O German School, O being Shunned

& Different there. But also here, where centuries
of Rhine, of Alsace, still in me find me,
stone-benched & exiled, innoble, petrol, history,

with wastrel dragonfly vagrant at my glass—
sugar, herb, perfume. Everything but the squeal
in the pepper pot, Germantown scrapple,

souse, head cheese, but for generations this scleral draft,
prow and ease, melancholia's sweet quench
washing it down. All distance. Day's blench.