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MY TUMOR LOOKS LIKE A SUNRISE ON THE MRI SCAN

Not to be outdone, but there is a tumor
fanned out like a goldfish
 
glowing in my gut. It swims perfect
figure eights and half moons,
 
spreading how the heat of day warms
the bones. It caresses
 
my belly like a monsoon. Let me explain:
all the pennies
 
in the fountain are dim in comparison
when held next to the glow
 
of my backlit scan, a battery-hot bigness
growing. I am filled
 
with radiation and love for the doctors
who feed me
 
to the machine. My veins jammed with
blue traffic, a pulse
 
tugging at the wrists. My tumor is too big.
If it could speak, it would say:
 
That’s what your mother said. I have
never set fire to a house,
 
but I have felt the frame that holds go up
in flames. Not even
 
the moon can eclipse this spangled halo.
This is no ordinary light
 
teething into the skin of the sky. No false
alarm or fool’s gold.
Picture
Leonardo Magrelli. Untitled, from the series The Glitch, 2015.

Kristene Kaye Brown is a mental health social worker. She earned her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her poetry and fiction have previously been published or are forthcoming in The American Journal of Poetry, Columbia Poetry Review, Harpur Palate, Meridian, upstreet, and others. Kristene lives and works in Kansas City.
Born in Rome in 1989, Leonardo Magrelli holds a BA in Design and Architecture from Sapienza University of Rome. In 2010, he started collaborating with International Rome’s Photography Festival and with the photography publishing house Punctum Press. In 2014, he began working on his own. In recent years, his work has been featured in several print and online photography magazines, and has been displayed in collective exhibitions and festivals.
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