When you’ve slept, not enough but just enough
that every further minute you might sleep
has particular and small substantive
weight like one last paper lantern floating
on a tilting face of crepey water,
a wolfish mouth, mouthful of bread, bread-sweet
spit, a sidewalk where a child finds a lost
cubic zirconia fallen from a girl’s
engagement ring, where a melting ice cube
rounds its corners, sticks to lips, clacks on teeth,
falls back to where the child has to decide
whether to hoard it or do the right thing,
when you are awake before seven and
before the mowers, the cats, the child who
is doing the right thing, when you could get
up but don’t: don’t do it yet.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 24, Issue 1.
Meghan Kemp-Gee lives somewhere between Vancouver BC and Fredericton NB. She writes poetry, comics, and scripts of all kinds. She co-created the webcomics Contested Strip and Space Heroines of El-Andoo, and her comics and short fiction have been published in numerous anthologies. Her poetry has recently appeared in PRISM, Copper Nickel, Rising Phoenix Review, The Shore, Stone of Madness, Altadena Poetry Review, Anomaly, Train, and Rejection Letters. She studied at Amherst College and Chapman University and is currently a PhD student at the University of New Brunswick. She also teaches composition and plays ultimate frisbee. You can find her on Twitter @MadMollGreen.
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