Select Poetry by MAKAELA SHEALY
We are pleased to offer the following select poetry from playwright, artist and actress, Makaela Shealy
BENTLEY
Apparently in each and every galaxy, center is directly attached to the individual:
asteroid belt, ocean tides, a person on a rooftop looking through a telescope,
someone watching them.
If it hinges on perspective, when we close our eyes, naturally it follows that
we slip back into the void (an argument for attention).
The known universe bends to an hourglass shape and drops sand-grain style into place
and you have to wonder, if everyone is looking all at once,
if all the plants are swaying, the shark alert, the baby crying, the atoms buzzing, the sun blazing;
how does our tiny earth resist the pull?
Where is the single point that we must drift to
and is it inevitable
and are we finite
or in a constant state of being reinvented?
Do all those moms on shamanic juice cleanses have it figured out?
Perhaps Isaac will come back as a wave of light,
travel further than our fixed temporal shells can go,
he won’t get distracted by jam and the way it drips from a certain someone’s teeth.
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Black Cords, Silver Zipper
Tiny wishes she begs god on the back of her bathroom mirror
for one more piece to land
for the glass to heal spider vein reverse time
peel glitter back like a scab
Keep riding dig deep until you choke the laces into a bow pick your hed up toss your hair
throw back the bottom of whatever last night left
And hear the opening chords of maybe this time echo in your toilet bowl
25 and feeling too old for ashtrays and promised lands
For slipping through a closing door before midnight and telling mom and dad I’m. just. Fine.
I have a therapist
And a weed dealer for when she’s out of town
And a lover who likes to find new inches of my body to conquer when I’m asleep
I know the east coast and sweat stains have left their lashes on my sink
And somewhere I smell pine
Or just old spice, think about the pews I listened from before I could see past a hymnal
The red-faced clown I let replace my nightmares about birds
Who yelled his way to heaven every weekend and made me hate black hair that’s wet
I wanted out and you got in just before my eyes clicked clock tick shut
You greet me lazy smile and drowned green eyes and I nickname you something trite
You said i gave you a better past to pull from when you write
My tongue ties a slipknot around your ribcage and suddenly you don’t even want to breathe
You listen when I hold my hand to your lips and whisper wait.
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A poem about a place I’ve lived.
Once I got so lonely that I lived on an island for 7 long years.
At the end of my self imposed sentence I tore open my blanketed eyes
salt water rushed out and back in
dipping toes, testing light
I woke up in the shade above La Boulangerie
where warm rough hands piled worry into yeast and let it rise in the dark.
When I was small, I didn’t believe in princesses, miracles, Santa Claus, faith;
I trusted patterns, repetition and what I could make with my hands.
Quicksand fists I learned to reign in the pop to sink
into things I’d have to set back free.
Something like a necklace clasp, soft 14 karat gold, seared flesh in summer.
The smell of orange knocks me and I make myself a monument on crimson bricks. If I stay here I will not go back there
If I stay here I will go back to sleep If I stay here I will not say yes, yes.
Soft quilted yellow sheets, four poster bed, writing desk she sat like this and sent him sheets to
Normandy. I have never learned to spell his name.
The place I box myself into is step by step a replica of hers.
The way I carry shame and grief for them is layered peeling paint around my neck.
Collared with history, “clothed in dignity,”
I stack the pennies from the ground heads up and roll them in my pocket as I leave.
by Makaela Shealy
Makaela Shealy (she/her) is a poet, playwright, and artist currently residing in New York City with her Hufflepuff Cat, Mu. She often publishes under the pen-name M. Dae. For Women Who Roar showcased several of her pieces during their Seattle, WA performance. Her work can be found online in Muse Pie Press’ Shotglass Journal Vol. #28, Allegory Ridge’s debut anthology: Aurora, and on her website: www.makaelashealy.com. Clay Girl is her completed chapbook
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