Having A Beer With Michelangelo

Look at the head,
how it lolls
toward your mouth
the flavor full-bodied.
One thing I have to know is
how did you get
the creases in her eyelids,
the crest of her lips.
What woman could be translated into marble?
That one there: she’s got Mary eyes,
but Madonna hips.
What could you do with that?
What can I?
Sometimes, Mike, the page is a slab of stone

that I can’t move
or carve
or make moan
Just tell me this:
when you painted those hands,
that throne of angels,
whose hands, whose faces
were you remembering?
When you got to the fingers
and made your brush breathe that space,
did you mean
that they’re almost touching,

or that they’ve justlet go

 
 
 

Megan Collins received an MFA in Creative Writing from Boston University, where she was a teaching fellow. She currently teaches creative writing at the CREC Academy of the Arts in Hartford, Connecticut, as well as literature at Central Connecticut State University. Her work has appeared in Rattle, Linebreak, Connecticut Muse, and is forthcoming in Blast Furnace.