Poetry By Caely McHale

Thomas and Dianne Jones CC





This Season


A bird flies into a window, turns around, and flies

into it again. And so it goes, my season of hopefulness. 

I squeeze soft snow, let my hot hands turn it to ice, then turn it to nothing. 

My toes are always cold. This season of expectation, I feel

I’m walking through spiderwebs but can’t quite

pinch the silk off my face, like a hair deep in my throat. My seasons

are all rain. I stand like a sheep with its forehead pressed against a wall of slate, 

shielding only its eyes from the storm. 

I wake when the sun breaks, I have a rock in my hoof, I have no thumbs to remove it. 

This season of shapeshifting, I find that the truth is a creature that is all tail, no head. 

This season of tilling, I find my garden teeming with worms, 

who respond to sudden sunlight like a person awoken from a deep, nude sleep. 

I stand naked outside for the first time in my life, but I stand by the door.

​





So Anyway
​

“So, anyway,” is the thing my grandfather says when he wants to end a conversation. 

When he wants to start a conversation, he begins to list the price, quality, cut, and origin of every piece of meat in his fridge. 

My mother responds by describing her latest bacon purchase, to the best of her ability. 

He gives away everything in his house, his shirts and teacups, a stranger’s finger in a jar. 

He thinks he will die soon. 

“I found this in the basement. So, anyway.” 

I turn the jar towards the beam of light from the window, try to identify a knuckle, a fingernail. 

My mother gives away everything in her house, the taste of cow’s tongue and silence in the morning. 

She wants to leave the past in the past. 

My shelves are filling up, my fridge is full of meat. 

We turn each other slowly in the light, squinting for a clearer view.

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Caely McHale is a poet living in Washington, DC. She earned her MFA from George Mason University in 2020, and her work has appeared in Radar Poetry, On the Seawall, and Heavy Feather Review, to name a few. ​