Selected Poems | Makayla Gay

Chekhov’s Wristwatch

When I was 20 I flew for the first time
(for the first time in my life I mean).
The whole way I held up my nephew’s fat bottom with the palm of my hand
while he pressed his melon against the window
and I kept trying to gently nudge his splayed fingers out of the way so I could see too.

Who did the Rockies look biggest to?

 

Me,

 

who has been on the ground (& for a while) who has looked up at mountains from the ground after

 

knowing mountains

 

or

 

him, who’s whole bottom fits in a hand.


Basil

Have I told you how badly I wanted to lift the shroud of Saint Basil of Ostrog
to see if the smell of basil lingered in his bones?

I didn’t—

not because I’m scared of the dead or the sacred

 

or to discover that miracles no longer exist

 

but because of this huge grey priest

 

that stood there with these eyes as sad as milk saucers.

He gave me the tiniest nod when I approached the body
and taught me how to make the sign of the cross.
I felt like I had been given a whole crate of oranges.

For Lennie

Faint watercolor paint over line drawings of vague figures at a dinner table and legs of family members. The accompanying text reads "For Lennie, Once, I was at a birthday dinner for my oldest friend. I was late & sat at the end of a big oak table. Everyone that came called her a different name. I didn't recognize any of them. I was the only person in her life to call her 'Helena.' I was so update I didn't stay for Karaoke. (I wonder what all the people in my life are like.) It feels like people are a shorthand for who I am at a given time. Like, my parents stand for when I still believed in god. Helena means that I'm lost & stuck and want blunt bangs. My older sister means that I desperately want to belong to a team. My younger sister is for the 6 days I woke up alone in my dorm room & realized something true about myself each morning. I have far brothers. I am a very complicated person. I went home with a man whose walls were blank, save for a tiny gilded frame with a stock photo of the Golden Gate bridge inside. 'You look just like your mother,' I said. He got very serious. 'I don't like looking at my own things.'"

Makayla Gay hails from Southeastern Kentucky. She received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Her work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Tupelo Quarterly, and Action Spectacle. She currently lives in Seattle, Washington.