You get lucky on a nuclear submarine, three hundred meters down

by Meghan Kemp-Gee

Bruce Barrow

On the eighth floor, the dishwasher’s groaning with desire. I wonder which sounds better, nebulae or nebulas. I wonder if there’s anything in the world less like nebulas than a drowning nuclear submarine, the last man standing, the crew all already gone, drowned or abandoned ship. Everything is bleak. Everything is an emergency. In movies, in such a situation, the lights blink sexy, copper-scented red. You have to do your duty, put all your own desires aside. You have to know what to make of the chirrs, snaps, and clicks at the sonar’s corners, end- less forests full of missing eyes, stars like drowning white bell-bottomed sailors, nothing like the sun. Imagine your desire, your security keycard clutched in your hot little hot pink fingers. You feel lucky, don’t you? I mean, imagine the missiles perched like saurian eggs inside their missile chambers, steel compartments flooding with deep- sea water, carbon dioxide-drunk, black silk, pressure points and ecstasy. Imagine lizard monsters carrying us in their mouths like treasure, depositing us into lizard nests with perfect care. How lucky, all those monsters, missiles, eggs, and your sworn solemn duty to send your desire swimming, reaching out like sonar, panting for mutual assurance, the bright red button labeled LAUNCH. Speaking of desire, your spine aligns, your hooves soften into human feet, wear down your tennis shoes on red-lit gangplanks, grills, and galley ladders. What’s the matter, sailor? the dishwasher mumbles. No co-commanding officer?

No Two-Man Rule? Imagine unloading the dishwasher, the unseasonable cold snap, a slight fever. On the eighth floor, I’m feeling lucky. Things are looking up.

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Meghan Kemp-Gee is the author of The Animal in the Room (Coach House Books, 2023) and three poetry chapbooks: What I Meant to Ask, Things to Buy in New Brunswick, and More. She also co-created the graphic novel One More Year. She currently lives in North Vancouver BC.