Pluripotent

AMANDA C. NIEHAUS is an American-Australian biologist and writer, currently an Australian Research Council Fellow at the University of Queensland, where she studies sex and death in wild animals. Writing awards include mentorship in the 2016 AWP Writer to Writer Mentorship Program and a 2017 Varuna Residential Fellowship to work on her first novel. Recent work appears or is forthcoming in Agni (online), NOON, Literary Mama, and Monkeybicycle.

PART 1.

IN 1911, J. F. Gudernatsch conducted an experiment on tadpoles, in which he fed them pieces of organs—including thyroid, liver, adrenal gland, pituitary gland, muscle, thymus, testicle, or ovary—from horses, calves, cats, dogs, pigs, or rabbits. He described the food as “ravenously taken by the animals.” Gudernatsch found that thyroid suppressed growth in the tadpoles but caused their immediate metamorphosis. They became frogs.

Cells proliferate in my uterus, forming cerebral cortex, salivary glands, blood, nipples. She curls into herself; she twitches involuntarily. She is a germinated mung bean, pale tail pushing into my spaces, all these astonishing spaces. If only I could see her, imagine her, dream her. Could I love her any more?

Fetal skin is like tadpole skin, thin and simple. Wounds heal rapidly, may leave no traces.

A newt can regenerate