MY TUMOR LOOKS LIKE A SUNRISE ON THE MRI SCAN
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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. |
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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.