Four short lines are enough to seat a whole table in Dave Bonta's "Vinegar." The scene is the loose, talkative stretch after a meal, when the plates are pushed back and the bottle is nearly empty. Someone, "the mother," is holding forth, and the surprise is that she addresses not a person but "the wine." The title, which we read first, quietly rewrites everything that follows. Vinegar is what wine becomes when it turns, and in vinegar-making the sour film that does the turning is called the "mother." The poem never spells this out, but the title and the last image suggest it is playing on both meanings at once: a human mother lecturing, and a mother-culture working on the wine.
That double reading drives the poem's central idea. "How to stay lit" can mean several things. It might be the glow of candlelight, the warmth in a face after a drink, or the slang sense of being tipsy. It might also mean keeping some inner flame going as the evening and the years wear down. The poem puts this question to the mother and the wine, and the answer it implies is odd and rather wise. Wine is what lights people up, yet here it is the thing being advised, perhaps scolded, perhaps changed. By the end the glow is on its way to becoming something sharp, and the poem seems to suggest that souring is not simply the opposite of warmth. It may be the next stage of the same substance, something that lasts after the brightness has gone. The mother who nurtures and the mother who transforms are the same figure.
The construction is lean and carefully weighted. By my count the lines run six syllables, six, five, then three, so the poem tapers like a candle burning down. There is no rhyme. Instead the sounds do quieter work. "After-dinner discourse" has a measured, three-beat pace, and the clustered d's give the phrase the slightly pompous roll of a speech. "Discourse" is itself a grand word for table talk, and it adds a gentle comic irony. Then the second line stops short on "stay lit," where two stressed syllables sit side by side and the clipped t closes the line like a snuffed flame. Compare the last word, "wine," with its long, open vowel that lingers after the voice has stopped.
The line break is also well placed. "The mother talking" could be a complete thought, a familiar picture of someone going on and on. Only after the break does "to the wine" arrive, and the swerve is both funny and strange. The poem says "to," not "with," so this is a monologue. The wine is a silent listener, patient and slowly being altered. The punctuation is just as sparing. The poem has no capitals and no full stop, and its single colon works almost like an equals sign. The first two lines name the topic, and the last two show what that topic looks like. Leaving the ending open feels true to after-dinner conversation, which never really concludes and just drifts on until someone blows out the candles.
The poem's imagery draws on several senses with very few words. We get light in "lit," taste in the title, and sound in "talking," and the poem moves from glow toward sourness. The hyphenated "after-dinner" also puts everything late in the day, after the main event, when things begin to turn.
Part of the poem's significance is how much it asks of its reader. It is as compact as a haiku, yet it holds a pun, a domestic portrait and a small idea about change. Because the title is the key, the poem rewards a second reading, in which "mother" and "wine" mean more than they did the first time. For students it is a useful example of how implication can do the work of explanation. Nothing is stated about age, decay or care, but all three are there, held in a single table scene and a sour little word.