Mordecai P. Martin
@MordecaiPMartin
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5th Generation New York Jew. Psychiatric survivor and Mad man. Writer. איבערטײַטשער. He/Him. Hairy and Overshare-y. Candidate @randolphmfa .
אויף דער יידישער גאס
Joined December 2008
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I’d like to be a NYRB published author, but I’ll settle for you reading my infrequent blog entries and commenting “this is really good! You should write more!”
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Interviewer: What’s this gap in your resume?
Me: Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of
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I held my son today. Hauled him up by his armpits so I could gaze into his beautiful face, plant kisses on his cheeks. Today, I watched a man holding a headless corpse of a young child in much the same way, a fiery hell behind them.
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I don’t particularly care about anything people are talking about on Twitter right now, I’m more into the alligator in my sister-in-law’s pool
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If you are a Jew, and you are struggling to understand your Jewish life without the state of Israel as a key component, but want to talk in good faith about how to be Jewish without Zionism? I am here to talk. We can not, implicitly or explicitly, support this cruelty and horror
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@edotwoods
Nathaniel Hawthorne: So what's Moby Dick about?
Herman Melville: *underbreath* you being my big strong sailor man.
NH: What?
HM: Uh, a whale
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This experience of people liking and retweeting me oddly reminiscent of my other most popular tweet
@edotwoods
Nathaniel Hawthorne: So what's Moby Dick about?
Herman Melville: *underbreath* you being my big strong sailor man.
NH: What?
HM: Uh, a whale
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Hey we kept the pregnancy off social media because social media sucks but my beautiful child was born on Friday so like literally none of this matters to me right now, maybe ever again, idk
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How do gentiles know when to put the tree up? How many of these traditions are based on vibes? This is unsustainable
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Zionism, like Whiteness, is an ideology and structure of power. It is not a Jewish principle. While many Jews benefit from that ideology and structure of power, not all Jews do, and any Jew can leave it and reject it, provided they are willing to uphold its antithesis, Liberation
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For the first time in maybe a year, I prayed kabbalas shabbos here. Looked for tehilim to read. In psalm 84 I read “I would rather be on the threshold of God’s house, than settled in the tents of the wicked” Better to just start in the work of God, than be comfortable in Cruelty
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I looked at the headless Palestinian boy, and the mix of horror and tenderness with which the man held him. I looked at the flames and smoke. I thought about Israeli soldiers and drones, their bringing of hell to the people in the video on my phone.
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This is a small thing, I guess. But today I submitted a story to lit mags with my first bio identifying me as a queer writer. I did that because it's relevant to the submission, but also. . . I dunno. I'm just trying not to hide from myself or anyone. I dunno. Might delete this.
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I thought about my son and holding children. I thought about telling my son, when he bumps his head, my love, watch your head, it’s precious cargo. Every inch of him a treasure. And this child, blown apart in a hell of Israeli devising.
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I thought about Israeli soldiers and I thought about hell.
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When the editor of the lit mag follows you and your work is in progress? 👀👀👀👀
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I resent the implication I see on here that I have to be on social media to promote my writing, that I need a social media presence to be a writer. I need a social media presence because I am an attention freak having a complete nervous breakdown,
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I thought about these words:. Hell. Israeli. Palestinian. Child. Head. Headless. Holding.
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I’m in a MFA in creative writing. We have two tracks, poetry and prose. I’ve been in prose this whole time. When my child was born, I joked, “I’m switching to poetry, it’s the only reasonable response to this feeling.” And that was funny and sweet . . . But now I’m doing it
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@ferrifrigida
It takes a celestial event just to shake us gently by the shoulder and say “wake up sweetie, we’re at grandma’s”
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@RaxKingIsDead
“Weirdly ominous music choice for such an uplifting story” he continuously leaves as a review
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I spent years of my life in study. I wanted to be a rabbi. For reasons intimate and political, it didn’t happen. But the process, involving 3 years in the Galilee and Jerusalem & courses in Israeli history & Zionist thought left me very clear on this: Zionism is an abomination
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I was not raised to believe in a hell, but awareness of it soaked in via cultural osmosis, and the possibility of eternal torment terrified me as a boy. Many times my father could only comfort me to sleep by reminding me over and over that as Jews, we did not believe in it.
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I want this war over. I want a free Palestine. I want us to raise our children to love who and what they are. And I want the martyrs to look down on their murderers, who will be, I hope, in Hell. God save us. God save the people Israel, from themselves, from Zionism. From Hell.
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We did not survive the gas chambers! Many many of us died in the gas chambers! This ridiculous comparison between those who suffered and died in the Holocaust and discomfort with being confronted with the crimes of Israel’s genocide dishonors our dead and you! -The Jewish People
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As a philosophy, Zionism is the worst of Jewish thinking, if it can even be called that. Shoddy and ignorant approaches to Jewish texts, political theory and human nature abound. As a politic, it has always been and is racist, cruel, and dedicated to violence. It must end.
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Everytime a lit mag I’m submitting to follows me I think “is this leading to an acceptance?” because I am nothing if not naive and stupid
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It is interesting to me how many of you are responding as if I had asked you to swim with the alligator. The alligator is fine where he is. No one is swimming with him. He is quite far from most of you, unless you too live in Tabasco, Mexico (the Eden of Mexico)
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Also, please remember: leaving Zionism is important, essential work as a Jew. But it is not sufficient to the cause of Palestinian liberation, which we also must support unwaveringly.
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@CarolineWazer
Right? This gator is like, “you guys in the river? I guess that’s cool, if you’re a plebe. Me, I hang by the pool”
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I am moved by the integrity of the authors withdrawing from prize lists to protest
@PENamerica
's refusal to name the genocide in Gaza and failure to meet their stated aims of protecting free speech and Palestinian writers. Here are their books to buy
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An oversimplification of course. Many many Jewish texts and religious thinkers posit a time of torture and horror after death for the sinful.
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Excited to announce that today I was accepted into
@randolphmfa
! I’ll be a member of the incoming cohort in June!
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A friend of mine, who was funny and brilliant and beautiful and taught me a lot and who I enjoyed laughing with died today. She fought for a long time to be here, on this earth, as herself, with full knowledge of how unlikely and punished that can be. I’m going to miss her.
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To this day, you can be threatened by rabbis and others with a fate in Gehinnom, an eerie valley near Jerusalem where, in the early common era, trash and bodies of criminals were burned.
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If you want to understand why I think that Zionism can not be redeemed, in good faith, I’m always here to talk. If you want to be set on a path toward understanding ways to be Jewish outside the blind, cruel, arrogant demands of Zionism, please be in touch. We must move on!
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Repeating this for myself:
I am not falling behind.
I am allowed to be less than highly visible and constantly published.
I am working on projects that are longer form, and take more time and have slower turnover than my shorter work.
I’m a good writer and it’s all ok
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I still love my fellow Jews. It has indeed led here, to Hell. I did not know, but should have, that Zionism would bring us here, would be so desperate to kill and punish the Palestinians for the crime of being our neighbors.
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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
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So now we are here, with Palestinians living in a hell, and a state calling itself Israel stoking the flames. And where does that leave us Jews?
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When thinking about the religious value of Jewish cohesion, what we call Ahavas Yisroel, the love of Jews for each other, for the community, I for many years thought of a story by IL Peretz in which a Hasid has a nightmare where he is isolated in a palace of ice.
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I was thinking about doing this for Pride but then I didn’t feel like coming out to my mom and dad just yet, so I pushed it back, and then here we are in Bi Visibility week, so why not: I realized I’m bisexual this year. Hi. This is me coming out on the internet. So there.
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The Hasid wakes from his nightmare crying, "Oh Master of the Universe, I would rather burn for an eternity in hell with the People Israel, then spend another minute in this place!"
For years, this is the standard I held myself too. To love my fellow Jews, even if it damned me.
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Someone tried to gotcha me and say “oh so are you also against the colonialism of the land you live on in the USA?” And make no mistake, it’s
#LandBack
and
#FreePalestine
and no contradiction there
As you participate in marches for Gaza and Palestine today across the americas, remember that you, too, are on stolen and occupied land.
This reminder isn't to "make it about us", because it *is* about us. We are all Indigenous peoples. We are all the wretched of the earth.
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I am having a moderately severe mental health crisis. I’m going to be checking this infrequently, but if you have kind words about me or my writing, I’d appreciate seeing them on the timeline. Love and strength to all of us. We are watching several catastrophes, and we feel them.
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I would love to do more interviews with writers. Who's looking for interviewers? I promise I'll read as much of your stuff as possible before asking questions
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And so we have arrived at 36. Happy birthday to me.
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So far, this MFA is a dream come true. Surrounded by people discussing craft and writing. It makes it easy and joyous to take my own writing seriously. I’m near tears.
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I'm excited for my piece to come out tomorrow in
@longleafreview
, but I'm very nervous too. It's not just about what I'm sharing with you all. It's about the two pictures in the next tweet.
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I definitely dream of having a series of youtube video interviews with other Jewish poets and writers. Should I just go for that?
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Struggling. Would love to hear something kind. Might be on the wrong website for that
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The problem with being really thoughtful about submissions and only sending them to mags you think will be good homes for them is that when you get a rejection you think "But . . . I did this just for you . . . who else would like it?"
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The truth is, we have no way of knowing whether antisemitism is on the rise or not in this moment because most of the orgs that are responsible for tracking it have decided people saying common sense things like “bombing children is bad” is somehow equivalent to antisemitism.
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An acceptance I wasn’t expecting, for one of my favorite pieces. Just lovely.
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@brondotcomputer
Pun intended, but something smells fishy. What’s this so called marine biologist gonna do if the cat has a problem? Dunk it in salt water and see if that helps?
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I’ve been rejected from
@splitlipthemag
a lot. Like, a bunch. But I’m not gonna give up. Quitting is very much something I believe is healthy and good, but I also firmly believe I’m selling what they’re buying. So let’s do this.
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Please go to and give
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New Yorkers, leave your ballot blank tomorrow. It sends a message to Biden and Dems that we will not accept their complicity in the vicious genocide the Israelis are perpetrating in Palestine
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Why not? An embarrassing but true tale of how I finally admitted to myself that I am a bisexual.
This friends, is a picture of a young Jack Kirby, the illustrator and comic artist behind most of the Marvel universe, and his wife Roz, an accomplished artist in her own right.
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I feel incredibly honored that my first Pushcart nomination is for a piece that’s so incredibly close to my heart. Thanks
@longleafreview
for believing in me and my letters to my uncle.
Today we're excited to announce nominations!
First up is our Pushcart noms. Be sure to give a congrats to
@TaraCampbellCom
,
@cosmicdrip_
,
@MordecaiPMartin
,
@AmandaBorquaye
,
@QuinnForlini
, and Aidan Dolbashian!!! 🍃
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Now we are 35. A very merry my birthday to you all!
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There are no poetics of a mass grave. There is no way to make it sing. There is just the place where everyone who deserved better is buried. We must keep our eyes on Gaza, on the massacres the Israelis are performing, on the mass graves.
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I was asked why I as a translator of Yiddish, as a writer who works with his Jewish ancestors, why do I only post Free Palestine, why don't I post about the horrors being faced by fellow Jews in this war. It was a bad faith question, meant to rile me. But I'm thinking it over.
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This was a big transition in my political thinking a few years ago, the move from “no one should be violent” to my current belief of “there is a moral and human right to liberatory violence against oppressors” I’m willing to speak to anyone who’s struggling to make the same move
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Call this a soft launch if you want, i don’t care, I literally have the most beautiful baby in the whole world and they’re a miracle!
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This is the reason it is not antisemitic to condemn Zionism as immoral. There are plenty of ways to be Jewish and not be a Zionist. No one is demanding an end to all meaningful ways of being Jewish. They are merely demanding an end to a crime that some Jews are performing.
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For many years, I did not acknowledge I was a Bisexual man. I allowed myself softness, I allowed myself thoughts about other men and what they might taste of, I allowed myself other masculinities and simply said, well I get to decide what straight means to me. Which is true.
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I once saw a Holocaust survivor speak at my synagogue and he began, “Have you ever been hungry? How hungry?” To go on to explain his experience of starvation in the camps. Thinking about that as Gaza is starved and left without water . Free Palestine, Ceasefire NOW.
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My in-laws have COVID-19. Please pray for a quick and painless recovery. Wear masks, stay inside, save lives.
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The worst part of having dead friends is that people who suck are still alive. Like, you want to turn to your friend and say “Can you believe this fuck? Wish they’d get hit by a bus” but your friend isn’t there anymore, and the person who sucks still is.
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My dad paid for a Madagascan hissing cockroach to be named after my mother at the Bronx zoo for Valentine’s Day. The card says “Dear H, we’ve come a long way from our first apartment, Love, S” 🥺😢😭
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Say the word Palestine. Say the words Free Palestine. Say the words Free Palestine from Israeli occupation and oppression. Say the words End Israeli apartheid. Say them! I promise you, they will feel good to say, and you won’t hurt anyone (not even people who say they’re hurt)
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For those wondering, my baby’s operation went very well! He’s healing up, as beautiful as ever, and today we are finally home and resting. I feel so many strange, strong currents in my chest.
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This thread is now a post at
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Just an update on this, since many of you were kind enough to express love and concern: Yesterday was maybe my worst day in the last 5 years. Certainly my worst day since the birth of my child. Seriously considered a visit to the Psych ER. I am feeling better, but the low was LOW
I am having a moderately severe mental health crisis. I’m going to be checking this infrequently, but if you have kind words about me or my writing, I’d appreciate seeing them on the timeline. Love and strength to all of us. We are watching several catastrophes, and we feel them.
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What writer do you read and enjoy but also think: "Wow, you're like . . . really smart"
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Well, I’m reaching the end of my attention span for understanding Christianity! Muting this!
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This sucks and is antisemitic!
The Sholem-Aleichem Cultural Center in the Bronx was vandalized with "Free Palestine" graffiti. A Yiddish language cultural center, it's not a Zionist-related institution by a longshot.
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I love switching from Melville to Proust and back again. From “I’m going to hunt down God in his whale form and strike him dead” to “this cookie reminds me of the saddest thing that ever happened to my first girlfriend’s dad” truly homosexuals can write it all.
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I enjoy pet ownership because it is taking a piece of your heart and giving it to a strange alien creature who you will never truly understand
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Submitting. It's just what you do when you believe in a piece. You just do it.
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I'm going to my MFA today, anyone want me to bring back anything?
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Me: I’m a fiction writer. I write fiction. I’m doing an MFA in fiction writing.
Also me: one more essay can’t hurt
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My mother is an incredible collage artist and she’s been feeling deeply inspired by the Webb photographs. Here is a Webb picture of nebulas and her interpretation
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Sincere question: what are the lowest energy ways to be a good literary citizen? Like, I love you all, I love being in literary community. But sometimes I barely manage to read and write for me. Reading for mags, editing or other contributions to literary spaces feel so beyond me
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Jewish food opinion: all the food I eat is Jewish because I am Jewish
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This is the active listening frog! When you are listening carefully and caringly you should be looking like this! Note the open posture and interested, receptive expression!
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This piece of writing, up today
@longleafreview
, is very near and dear to me. It was deeply moving to write it, for me and for the family members I talked to while writing it. Please read and let me know what you think
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After 18 years of dropping in and out of college, I’m graduating this year. I full on claim Grover as my commencement speaker
Congratulations,
#Classof2021
! Your old pal
@Grover
knows you’re going to do amazing things! 🎓
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I appreciate the friends who have reached out one on one to see how this week has worn on me. The truth is, everything is complicated this week by the fact that my child is going in for surgery on his cleft lip tomorrow. That’s where my heart is, with my child, with the future.
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