Laura Renata Martin
2 poems on reciprocity
1.
the use of metal to grow more metal is strange to us
but logical to the medieval alchemists
who saw it as using germs of wheat to grow a field–
gold as living creature that can reproduce itself
like the formula for capital without the commodity
or labor to create surplus
its the myth of the self made
jeff bezos making more jeff bezoses from his own body
little bezoses springing athena-like from his head
i bet he loves the dream of autopoeisis:
self expansion without the introduction of an outside element
i don’t make gold like jeff bezos
but i did make my child from my body
and know something about the pain
and pleasure of expanding oneself
i don’t condone autopoeisis though because
it goes against life:
you don’t get something for nothing
and growth requires merging with the new
2.
if you hold the pain of a headache
without projecting it into the universe
you might find god
or an anarchist Christian philosopher eating wartime rations
as an act of self denial
is it better to die of starvation in solidarity
or to live and fight on?
is it better to impair the universe by casting our pain out into it
or to let it eat away at our skulls?
although magic is based on the law of reciprocity
the void birthed by imbalance breaks through this law
imagine breathing in without breathing out
or a hole into which nothing flows
it’s so against the order of things
that out of its own impossibility
something else appears
like when a thing happens that’s so terrible
it makes it impossible to write or make art anymore
what strange negation emerges instead?
Laura Renata Martin is a writer and professor of History and Labor Studies. She has published writing in Hot Pink, Blind Field Journal, LIES, Radical History Review, and the Pacific Historical Review. She has published two chapbooks: The Utopia of the Sealed Sphere (Bottlecap Press, 2023) and Enemies/Enemigos (Commune Editions, 2017).