by Katie Kemple

Before I entered the MRI, they gave me headphones
to dull the machine sounds that jackhammered
a tartan fabric in my ears. I entered a tunnel
out of a Kubrick film. The universe scanned me.
My inner scaffolding revealed itself to the viewer,
the ladder of my spine showed its fault line at L4-
L5, where the dent appeared like the damaged side
of the Colosseum. My spine, an artifact
from earlier civilizations: seahorse to monkey,
my mother’s womb in the seventies,
my first dance recital as Raggedy Andy,
my twenties in that Egyptian dance company

where I split into a broken glyph. My disc
slipped. Like a scratch on a record, I skipped.
How many slats can you pull from a Jenga,
before the tower topples? As a belly dancer
I performed with a candelabra on my head.
Fate asked: how many candles can you juggle?
My spine held steady. The MRI finished
its sewing medley. It knew my pattern now,
clucked its tongue, left the psychic predictions
to priests in white cloaks and covered mouths.  

Katie Kemple is the author of Love in the Key of COBRA, winner of the 2025 Iron Horse Literary Review chapbook prize; and Big Man (Chestnut Review Chapbooks). Her work has appeared in Frontier, Sixth Finch, and One Art. She’s the co-founder of ThePoetryShop.com. More of her work can be found at katiekemplepoetry.com.