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Writer's pictureLammergeier Staff

The Organism's Phenotype | Kristin LaFollette



I’ve always known the colors of blood


In a field near our house:

A deer with its organs

removed by my father’s

hands—


The purple-red meat, a damp smell like

brown leaves


and bath water


I was the adult: The pouring of it all

out of an open wound

in my brother’s


head—


I knew the brother’s head-blood, shining

and slick on the linoleum

floor of my mother’s

kitchen,


recognized it when, at 17, I saw my own fill a

plastic bag in a high school gymnasium.


To fill another body—

I learned typing as a

lab assistant (b positive),

liquid like a full hot sea—


What we breathe is air—

Blood from bone,

we are made of letters

All of us letters,

a pedigree of small rooms:





Kristin LaFollette is a writer, artist, and photographer and is the author of the chapbook, Body Parts (GFT Press, 2018). She is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Southern Indiana.


Twitter: @k_lafollette03

Personal Website: kristinlafollette.com

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