Even the Vineyards Cried by John C. Mannone

The crew slipped off the waterlogged planks

with the goats. Wooly-oil stench and urinated

    hay wafted from the cabin. Outside,

    the air moistened with hope.

They rushed out, grasped the dirt, embraced

the wet smells now sunken deep into nostrils.

    Knees pressed into the wet rust-red clay,

    hands thrust high in thanks.

Limestone slopes sipped the noonday sun,

    and the cool evening sweetly kissed

    the Muscatine vines.

It was Fall, in the aftermath of the deluge,

the once barren fields now covered

    in grasses clovering air.

And the vineyards grew in grace

    trellising the harvest-green face

    of  the Armenian mountains. 

When fine wine dripped from lush grapes,

a feast, as if a wedding, was planned.

    So came the farmer & his wife,

    his sons & their wives

    with all their intoxicated dreams

    that stripped the dignity from men.

Even the vineyards cried

at the nakedness of their father—

    the rape of their mother.

Their sons could not cover-up

the deceit of their younger brother,

    Ham, who was drunk

    with lust.

John C. Mannone has poems accepted in North Dakota Quarterly, the 2020 Antarctic Poetry Exhibition, Foreign Literary Review, The Menteur, Blue Fifth Review, Poetry South, Baltimore Review, and others. His won the Impressions of Appalachia Creative Arts Contest in poetry (2020) and the Carol Oen Memorial Fiction Prize (2020). He was awarded a Jean Ritchie Fellowship (2017) in Appalachian literature and served as celebrity judge for the National Federation of State Poetry Societies (2018). His latest collection, Flux Lines: The Intersection of Science, Love, and Poetry, is forthcoming from Linnet’s Wings Press (2020). He edits poetry for Abyss & Apex and other journals. A retired physics professor, he lives near Knoxville, Tennessee. http://jcmannone.wordpress.com