about the author

John Liles is a vertebrate, poet, science writer, and living heterotroph. He is an MFA candidate in the Brown University MFA program. His work has been published, or is forthcoming, in Arcadia, inter/rupture, Gulf Stream, and at Omniverse.us. His poetry has also been chosen for the Ina Coolbrith Memorial Award. Send thoughts of small animals to john_liles@brown.edu.


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Myogenesis and the rest unsettled

John Liles



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Cushions become cuspid
valves. What comforts later
allows. Endothelial cell-lineage,

the heart is its own
hesitation.

*

Some muscles aren’t absolute. You reach into
a reflex and allow
reversal.

Calories uncounted,
turns out progress
is stalling

what you’ve swallowed.

Chase after your
reflection and feel
less.

*

What once was is still
reachable, an outline
you’ve soured over.

Indelible and spilled, you
abrade the paper,
peel another top-pulp.

But it’s still stained.
Your next start
stung deeper.

*

Translocating
in lower somite-stages
establishes skeletal muscle
starts and skin rises.

Precursors with end-points
already determined—clock
and notch toward appropriate
stitching.





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