Jena Martin is a pathologist in Minneapolis.
Collage art is uniquely arresting and Brenna Fitzgerald’s work “I Am Moments” (Intima, Fall 2020) is powerful. Her beautifully rendered collage places humans in nature, layering skeletal muscle fibers that pulse under a human heart, echoing in an overlying shell.
The truths Breanna visually expresses are some of the very same I strive to express through poetry. Just as Brenna shows, our very anatomical selves are made up of the same building blocks that comprise all life on earth.
My poem “Haematein” (Intima, Fall 2022) explicitly grapples with our nature under the microscope. The poem is my reflection on the fact that hematoxylin—the chemical ingredient that is half of the histology workhorse stain H&E—comes from the logwood tree. It is isolated from the heartwood of the logwood and modified to haematein for use in staining tissues. Acceptable synthetic substitutes have not been found.
I weave my daily experience with hematoxylin together with the classic 20th century poem “Some Trees” by another collage artist and celebrated poet John Ashbery. He says that we are what the trees tell us, which is the literal truth of hematoxylin. But no poem is read literally.
With the aid of hematoxylin, I identify and name the human body. Naming and categorization is the basis of science, medicine, and how we make sense of our place in the world. Naming is both comforting and rational.
But sometimes we are blinded to how our own perspective distorts the picture. We interpret histology to suit ourselves and anthropomorphize natural forces. We forget we are interacting with our own creation and even name parts of a tree after our anatomy—although the center of the tree is called the heartwood, trees do not have hearts.
Whether we match ourselves to nature or make nature match us, we imagine we are driving the relationship. But despite our chainsaws and wood chippers we are not in charge. Nature promises our end and no categorization can blunt that reality. We name and stain our tissues with the implements of nature, but in the end, without blood, we are translucent—like the wings of the flies and maggots that will decompose us. Rather than being entwined with nature and needing to perfect that relationship, we, in this moment, are nature.
Jena Martin is a pathologist in Minneapolis.