Coup de Coeur

Meghan Kemp-Gee

The nicest thing that anyone has ever said to me
is legs too long for the bed. Those nice cold feet. The best
thing in the world, I say, is the coronary
artery doing its thing. It’s nice, I say, how
animals are falling in love, how we will pass
away in the surf, drown in the bath. The salty
blood’s stampede under the skin is nice, thighs’ rise and
falling, nice girls’ names on our lips, like animals
falling off cliffs, the thighs and the bed, the belly
full of breath and blood, of benign cells churning out
copy (it loves them), A T A G (love) T G
A C T C. These (and go ahead, love them)
are nice things I love, the nicest (and I love them)
things that (if you love them, if you can) you can say.

Meghan Kemp-Gee is the author of two chapbooks, What I Meant to Ask and The Bones and Eggs and Beets. Her debut full-length poetry collection The Animal in the Room is forthcoming from Coach House Books in May 2023. She also co-created Contested Strip, the world’s best comic about ultimate frisbee (and soon to be a graphic novel). She currently lives somewhere between North Vancouver BC and Fredericton NB. You can find her on Twitter @MadMollGreen.