Ghazal With Tequila

It arrived in a clear bottle with black letters: Reposado Tequila. I introduced myself, as I would with wine: hello, tequila.

Jimadores clip the agave’s center stalk before flowering. They must kill beauty to coax the beauty of tequila.

I thought the liquid came from the leaves, the blue exalting spikes–but as with anything noble, from the core comes tequila.

Baked, then pressed. Then the alchemy of yeast and the churning, industrious bubbles. At last: the vegetal sting of tequila.

Reposado means aged, or “rested.” Hah! I have rested my life.

Is there any other way to sup the sun? If there is, Jo, you’ve forgotten it for tequila.

Joanna Solfrian’s first collection, Visible Heavens, received the Wick First Book Poetry Prize, judged by Naomi Shihab Nye. Her second collection, The Mud Room, came out in 2020 from MadHat Press, and in 2021, Finishing Line Press published a chapbook of ghazals called The Second Perfect Number. Her poems have appeared in journals such as The Harvard Review, Boulevard, Image, Spoon River Poetry Review, Margie, Rattapallax, The Southern Review, and Pleiades. Solfrian lives and works in New York City. Read more at www.joannasolfrian.com.