by Marianne Mersereau
She planted them to climb every structure on the farm,
they crawled across the barn, the chicken coop and house,
allowing my mother and aunts to open the bedroom
window, reach out and pluck the purple fruit.
Great grandmother made her wine during prohibition,
gave my ten-year-old mother sips of the rich merlot
in the cellar surrounded by the scent of harvested potatoes
and apples mingled with oak, rows of canned green
beans, corn and jelly lining the shelves
and grandmother’s laughter rising up from the
damp darkness. Everyone said she was crazy
but turns out she was just tipsy is how my
mother described her.
The more she drank, the more she talked of half-siblings,
unwed mothers and other secrets, and whatever she said
in the cellar stayed there, fermenting
with the forbidden juice.
Marianne Mersereau grew up in the Southern Highlands of Appalachia and currently resides in the Pacific Northwest. She is the author of the chapbook, “Timbrel” (Finishing Line Press, 2013). Her writing has appeared in The Hollins Critic, Bella Grace, Entropy, Still Point Arts Quarterly, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Deep South Magazine, Seattle’s Poetry on Buses, Remington Review and elsewhere, and appears in several anthologies. She was awarded a Second Place Prize in Artists Embassy International’s Dancing Poetry Contest in
2018. Find her online at mariannemersereau.com.
