"In Heaven There Will Be No Bodies," by Megan Pinto (Poetry '18)

2018 poetry graduate Megan Pinto was recently featured in the Los Angeles Review. Read an excerpt of Pinto’s poem below:

which exist to tempt us, and move us

toward grace. I try and imagine

a bodiless place, full of holographic angels

and saints, walking through clouds or staring

into space. When I think of grace

I see my Grandmother on the carpet, folded

over at her knees. I see my Mother

in lamplight, eyes closed and feeling

for the next Rosary bead. As a child,

my Mother waited outside St. Michael’s

in Mahim, for rations of milk and curds

of cheese. She tells me they had only

white bread to eat, which is how I imagine

manna, torn and falling from God’s open palms

like bags of Sara Lee before geese

at the park. Inside all my Bible picture books,

God’s face is European, maybe even

Portugese…

“In Heaven There Will Be No Bodies,” by Megan Pinto (Poetry ’18)