Somewhere the lake’s shore
meets the overcast dark, gulls
teeter across the ice.
Sometimes they slip, their boat-bodies rocking.
Sun melts a cool
blue pool at the center
where two swans dive.
Sometimes I am hungry, angry,
lonely and tired, all at once.
I google the gulls– not seagulls, maybe a black-tailed gull. . .
Why must we persist
within such cold?
A woman in a down coat examines berries at the market, off-season.
They are hard like stones.
I want to pluck
stray feathers from the seams
of her sleeve, return them to her hands.
—
Megan Pinto’s first collection, Saints of Little Faith, is forthcoming from Four Way Books in Fall 2024. Her poems can be found in Ploughshares, Guernica, Lit Hub, AAWW’s The Margins, and elsewhere. She is a 2022-2023 Artist Fellow with The Peace Studio, and has received support from Bread Loaf, the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference, and an Amy Award from Poets & Writers. Megan lives in Brooklyn, and holds an MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson.