Arthroscopy
I wonder what it’s like to make the first
cut. And I wonder what it’s like to make
a list: anterior cruciate, out-of-
pocket maximum, co-pay, patella,
tibial plateau, how everything they
send you with your address printed on it
makes you out shameless and unready,
makes you remember how the latest bill
from Cedars Sinai before insurance
adjustments talks real dirty, says to you
twenty-two thousand, four hundred eighty-two dollars
and fifty cents, everything they send you
or put inside you says you should be dead
already or you will be whole again.
By Meghan Kemp-Gee
Biography
Meghan Kemp-Gee lives somewhere between Vancouver, Los Angeles, and Fredericton NB. She writes poetry, comics, and scripts of all kinds. She won the Poetry Society of America 2014 Lyric Poetry Award. Her work has also appeared in Copper Nickel, Helen: A Literary Magazine, The Rush, Switchback, Tincture, Stone of Madness, Altadena Poetry Review, Anomaly, Autostraddle, and Skyd Magazine. She teaches written inquiry and composition at Chapman University. You can find her on Twitter @MadMollGreen.