Before living here, I believed early autumn was fitful greens, gold not yet shining, dull reds, pale orange turning to yellow, all waiting to explode. But here, the colors are surreal: purple-black, translucent white with a celestial glow, and a red so soft it is a whisper. The wine grape harvest means large plastic bins of grapes never stop coming off trucks. But I am a consumer, not a vintner, so I sit at a table with friends, surrounded by vines already picked bare. We drink wine made from grapes harvested years ago, watch as workers move, lift, roll, carry. The aroma of pinot is everywhere, rushes and soaks into everything, making even non-drinkers swoon. The pale green vines surrounding us are depleted. My friends and I watch the magic trick called wine at its simple start—another truck, weighed down with grapes, pulls up. We pull our sweaters closed and drink. The sun melts into the sky.
Early Autumn, Willamette Valley
Mary Christine Delea
Three Questions for Mary
What inspired your choice of genre(s) and/or form(s) for your work? What was your creative process? What is the significance of this work to you?
"Domestic Violence Shelter": I have written a number of poems based on my experiences working in domestic violence shelters. This particular one was written when I was writing a poem a day for a month a few years ago. I used the intake form format in order to describe cases of DV and the intern’s back and forth of her emotional reactions.
"Early Autumn": some poems just seem to want to be prose poems. Others get revised as free verse and then prose again. This one just seemed to work better as a prose poem. I have been writing more nature poems recently—they tend to be odes, elegies, or a combination of those.
"How to Have Sex": This poem is one of my process poems, currently in a full-length manuscript I am submitting. I wrote this as lockdown was lifting and I was thinking of things people might need to be reminded how to do. I had taken a Zoom workshop where we wrote an erasure poem. These two things combined and I wrote this poem. Since writing this, this dish’s title and webpage have been updated. I also must admit I have not cooked this dish.
Mary Christine Delea has a Ph.D. and is a former university professor. She continues to teach through in-person and online workshops and in her volunteer positions. Her poems have been published in one full-length collection (The Skeleton Holding Up the Sky from Main Street Rag Press), three chapbooks, numerous journals, and various anthologies. Originally from Long Island, NY, she now lives in Oregon.