Cover Image by Weihui Lu
At home, we keep my father from the news.
The news addles his mind. Our doctor says
she tells all her patients to turn off
their screens, to consider knitting or meditation
instead. She has experienced the mind’s slow
pull toward oblivion.
My father fears economic collapse.
He would feel more comfortable if I
would only withdraw $200,000
in cash—just to have on hand.
I thought the end would need more
bright angels in chariots, a sudden bloom
of locust in the tap water,
but no. The light each morning
is the same. When I sleep, I sleep fitfully
each hour opening an eye to check
for the sun’s slow rise
over the neighbor's lawn.
Alone, I resume a documentary
about space. There is an urgent search
for another planet just like Earth.
It’s very possible, scientists say.
A PhD in Hawaii demonstrates centrifugal force
with her fire fan. On the International
Space Station, Astronauts see sixteen
sunsets and sunrises in one
human day. Imagine the abundance.
You could begin again.
“In these sharply resonant poems, Megan Pinto writes with grace and precision about self-discovery, grief, desire, and existential yearning. Each poem is finely crafted by a poet of incredible skill and vast expanses of feeling. I thought my sorrow could transform me, Pinto writes. I have no doubt it will transform readers of this outstanding collection as well.”
-Matthew Olzmann
“In Saints of Little Faith by Megan Pinto, these are beautifully rendered ruminative and thoughtful coming- of-age poems populated with people, such as the speaker’s ill father and past lovers, miniature narratives, and small fragments that pass by and become a line, as if the reader is on a train at twilight. These are poems of longing and growing at once. Perhaps in these poems, longing and growing are the same thing, or at least in the same hemisphere. These are both poems and holes, where the speaker’s language attempts to fill the void with its painful music, as in the poem “Tunneling,” where the speaker is blanketed by language, while it softened all wailing into song.”
- Victoria Chang
Megan Pinto’s title, Saints of Little Faith, might—as they say—say it all. Because her austere, unnerving poems (I am calm. Like a serial killer) do read a little like prayers. Or like unspeakable aubades eked out before dawn. How steady these survival notes are, hemmed in by the deepest silence imaginable to track rising fears in families, in big cities; for young or old, an acute loneliness. Yet there is solace just by saying, and brave of this poet to put it all out there. But this book is also a thing rare in poetry, wonderfully what Erza Pound demanded a century ago: poems must be at least as interesting as prose. That’s largely Pinto’s weaving small shocks, heart-stopping story into her beautifully made lyric poems. And sudden overlooks into their chasms. At night, I stare into the dark, and darkness stares into me, this poet tells us. How the mind searches, restless and in vain, she says. Stunned, we watch that mind discover itself until O, heart—a new day as eyes open to an empty room. Or until, like light breaks / across the East River … love / does not so much come to me as / move through me.
-Marianne Boruch