Back to the camera today. I am noticing what I am noticing. This is a process of writing, of all art making, but in photographs it is some how more deeply felt. What is it about the graffiti, the stickers, the posters and signs that make up the clothing of the street that appeals toContinue reading “The Writing on the Wall”
Author Archives: Mordecai Martin
A Vist to el Museo Nacional de Antropología
These pictures catalog what caught my eye most recently at el Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City. I feel a certain guilt for failing to have done the work here of distinguishing between cultures, artists, recreations and originals. But I wanted to preserve the feeling of a museum, where the past arrives in aContinue reading “A Vist to el Museo Nacional de Antropología”
10 Photos As A Beginning
I don’t know how this will work. There is so much to discover. Apertures and light. A camera is a room, so is a stanza. A paragraph has no etymological connection to a room, a space to be inside, but it has a spiritual one. Here is what I am trying to say. I amContinue reading “10 Photos As A Beginning”
Hell. Hold. Head.
I hold my child, and raise him as a Jew. I kiss his head; praise in Yiddish, his cleverness. Yiddisher kop, I say. Good Jewish head. The Palestinian child I see in my phone, headless. Behind my eyes. In my soul. Headless, small corpse.
Two Jewish Poems by Mordecai Martin
I started taking my writing seriously by taking poetry seriously, spending time in workshops and reading collections. I never published any poems. I never felt they were strong enough to submit, but I wrote them, including two that feel pressing today. One was my response to the Squirrel Hill shootings at the Tree of LifeContinue reading “Two Jewish Poems by Mordecai Martin”
The First Time I said Free Palestine
There is a truth we are not hearing, although it is everywhere. We dissemble it, we call it complicated and wall it off behind experts who never seem to name it. But truth is never too complicated to be understood. We ignore the people who speak the truth. We call them foolish, or too young, or too soft hearted, or too innocent and utopic, or too gullible or too ashamed. I’ve been called all that, when I say two words: Free Palestine
The Cleft; The Minyan
When I woke up to the war, my wife said, “I don’t want you to be upset.” I was still mostly asleep. “Uh oh,” I said. “Why would I be upset?” “Netanyahu has declared war.” I thought about this for a moment or two. “On who?” I finally ventured. “Palestine,” she said, as if itContinue reading “The Cleft; The Minyan”
Midnight A Train
I leave 190th street and a municipal elevator rockets me into the ground where I meet one of those subway trains that wend their way under the earth that I have been riding for much of my life and much of my parents’ lives and much of my grandparents’ lives and much of my greatContinue reading “Midnight A Train”
There Goes Funky Flashman: An obituary for Stan Lee
I wrote this on November 12th, 2018 for my now-defunct newsletter, and I’m posting it here in honor of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Stan Lee. Stan Lee died today, aged 95, outlasting just about anyone who thought of him as anything besides the lovable grandfather of Marvel Comics. Oh, there were alwaysContinue reading “There Goes Funky Flashman: An obituary for Stan Lee”
You Can’t Stay Here: An open letter to Mayor Eric Adams
I am trying to end my time in Philadelphia. It has been difficult. I’m trying to sell my house, and no one wants to buy it. Well that’s the way of the market, I suppose. Interest rates and so on. Maybe the basement is damp. Things invisible and visible, that’s what is happening. I amContinue reading “You Can’t Stay Here: An open letter to Mayor Eric Adams”
Mordecai Martin, Writer 