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Image by Simon Wilkes

ROOTS

the madrigal, volume ii

Forty-Eight Hours

by jacqueline brown

My father always used to say

I weighed a kilo

He didn’t say how I was born as night turned to day with the

Early morning sun rising

Or how quiet I was

My lungs depriving themselves of oxygen while

My brain waged war against me—

A body furiously red

He never told how loud the cries of my mother were

As she wrestled with the thought that her child might leave this earth

Left to dangle between the precipice

Of heaven and hell

I suppose he never had to

The scale

Said everything

Jacqueline Brown is an Irish-American studying at the University of Pennsylvania. Her work has previously appeared in Placing Poems, The Publishing Post, the debut issues of Prickly Pear Magazine, Truffle Magazine, and The Initial Journal, and elsewhere.

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