The Artist
by Megan Pinto
stored away. What it was
had yet to appear. Leaves kept falling
until all was green in the mind.
I learned to walk for a long
time in the dark, without
getting lost. Each morning
I studied a parcel of sky and I
noted cloud activity. Then I stripped
language down, revealing bird song.
It will be a hard life, my parents
said, shutting a door
between us. But I was committed.
One could accept heartbreak,
if given the right circumstances.
A good actor might weep. A great
actor would do less. In the dark,
I feel memory rehearsing its lines
again, in pianissimo: There goes
my life again, it says, passing
through me. And where
on this green earth am I?
Megan Pinto is the author of Saints of Little Faith, from Four Way Books (US) and the87press (UK). Her poems can be found or are forthcoming in The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, Ploughshares, and on The Slowdown podcast. She has received the Anne Halley Prize from the Massachusetts Review and an Amy Award from Poets & Writers, as well as scholarships and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference and Storyknife. She lives in Brooklyn.
Photo Credit: Beowulf Sheehan