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perhappened mag
issue 7: SNOWFALL

the same path

KATIE MANNING
CW: discussions of cancer
​The oncologist shows us 
the tumors on the screen:

two fuzzy white circles 
stacked like a headless 

snowman. He explains
how he knew exactly

where to look: cancer cells
from the testes always travel

back up the same path 
the testes descended 

before birth. This detail feels 
so perfect, so neatly ordered, 

that if this were a textbook 
and not my loved one’s body,

if this were not the news 
we dreaded, the starting line 

for chemo, I could marvel
at the miracle of this fact.

Katie Manning is the founding editor-in-chief of Whale Road Review and a professor of writing at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego. Her book Tasty Other won the 2016 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award, and her fifth chapbook, 28,065 Nights, is newly available from River Glass Books. katiemanningpoet.com, Twitter: @iamkatmann, Instagram: @katiemanningpoet, Facebook: facebook.com/katiemanningpoet.
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