Behold

A man walks into a bar                                  

with a gun. The doe is trying

to cross the road. When Michelangelo

looked at slabs of stone, he saw angels

waiting to be freed. All art

preserves the history of those who can

and cannot speak: a man 

walks into a train with a gun. The child

was crossing the street: the sun 

on her bare skin blazed 

like the black top asphalt where

we traded kisses and lip balm 

after school. Did the nuns know? Those last 

few weeks of school, we practiced how to hold 

the Eucharist in cupped palms. In second grade

we were waiting to receive God. Sometimes

the nuns held our wrists, sometimes 

we cried. A speech therapist walks into a room

with a girl: I sit 

and let her teach me, we practice

pronouncing words like reciprocity, violin--to rid

my accent of me: shame

runs corrosive throughout the body. Listen, 

how I whisper your name in the dark. 

My mother tells me all my poems 

are love poems, and all my poems are sad. 

Just like Rodin, who gazed

at Michelangelo’s slaves, wanting 

to breathe life into his own stone bodies. God imagines 

our lives twice: first as matter, then

as song. Look:  

how sunlight hits my chair 

that once held 

your body: a widening wash

of sun. 

Winner of the 2020 Small Orange Emerging Woman Poet Honor

Megan Pinto's poetry can be found in Lit Hub, Ploughshares, Meridian, and elsewhere. She has received scholarships from Bread Loaf and the Port Townsend Writers' Conference, and an Amy Award from Poets & Writers. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson.