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Mordecai Martin

@mordecaimartin.net

1.7K followers 840 following 2.4K posts

He/him. Writer. איבערטייטשער. Fifth generation New Yorker. Mad man and Psychiatric Survivor. Hairy AND over-share-y. MFA from Randolph College. http://www.MordecaiMartin.net. https://fartaytshtundfarbesert.substack.com/

www.MordecaiMartin.net.

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Mordecai Martin @mordecaimartin.net · Nov 11

Fuck I did my #introduction post and I forgot to put a link to my website that has all my publications and my blog and my contact form. Fuck. Fuck me. Shit. Shit balls. Fuck a duck. Fuck a rama ding dong. Shit and piss. Fuck, shit, and assholes. Assholes and piss. Fuck a dog.
Jesus fucked. Dang.

Mordecai Martin, Writer

Visit the post for more.

mordecaimartin.net

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Mordecai Martin @mordecaimartin.net · 21h

Check it out!!!

NAWP @notatawp.bsky.social · 25d

Announcement time! October 14th, 7:00 Eastern: Hear poems from @clbpoetry.bsky.social, @mitchnobis.bsky.social, and @djvorreyer.bsky.social! Hosted by the amazing @readinstead.bsky.social!

Hit the eventbrite link to register. NAWP!

www.eventbrite.com/e/a-nawp-rea...

Promo graphic with author photos of Donna Vorreyer, Chris Butler, and Mitchell Nobis. And the NAWP ostrich, of course.
The text says:
A NAWP Reading
Chris L. Butler
Mitch Nobis
Donna Vorreyer
Hosted by
Jared Beloff
October 14, 2025
7:00-8:00PM EST

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Mordecai Martin @mordecaimartin.net · 1d

Oh wait, youse was talkin' bout VIKTOR Shklovsky? Da Russian Formalist? Oh naw, naw bro, I was talking about my guy BILLY Shklovsky! From Canarsie!

Mordecai Martin @mordecaimartin.net · 1d

I advise patience to myself

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Reposted by Mordecai Martin

Bluma @bluma.bsky.social · 1d

A small boat floated amongst the ship. A boat called an LST, built to sail right up to the shore, open its wide mouth, and spew trucks, jeeps and soldiers from its innards. Supply trucks, guns, rifles, ammunition rest in the belly of the LST, and the deck is loaded with war materials. And amongst the vehicles, crates of rifles, young men lie staring in the dark.

Eight days they had been cutting through the sea, and tomorrow, on the ninth, the bloody shore must appear from the blue of the ocean.

The youths lie in the LST, packs under their heads like pillows at night. Rifles resting close by their sides. Young men lie, thinking thoughts, rocked on the waves.

In the darkness, a harmonica plays. The thin, yearning notes draw out across the length of the boat. The tune — a story of a girl and her soldier-boy:

I’ll be seein’ you
In all the old familiar places…

The harmonica weeps, creeping into the eyes, into the throat — until ——————

— Give it a rest, Okie — a hoarse voice shouts from somewhere in the darkness.

Mordecai Martin @mordecaimartin.net · 1d

making literature in translation your whole online personality is a great way to really stump most social media algorithms

Rachel Feder @rachelfeder.bsky.social · 2d

Tell me your most unhinged literary opinion, as a little treat

Mordecai Martin @mordecaimartin.net · 1d

They do so love to scream

Mordecai Martin @mordecaimartin.net · 1d

Fidelity should be, if not wholly abandoned, seriously questioned as the goal and assumption of literary translation.

Rachel Feder @rachelfeder.bsky.social · 2d

Tell me your most unhinged literary opinion, as a little treat

Mordecai Martin @mordecaimartin.net · 1d

Dizzy is so real for this one

poison ( haunted ) doll @poisondoll.sisc.one · Oct 13

i don't know how to say it but the fact that there used to be websites and there used to be places are related

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Reposted by Mordecai Martin

Mordecai Martin @mordecaimartin.net · Nov 13

Who’s got plans? Like, schemes?

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Reposted by Mordecai Martin

Mordecai Martin @mordecaimartin.net · Nov 14

It’s odd how when traveling from Mexico City and reaching New York, I have to adjust to hearing English and think something other than “arrogant tourists.” Or maybe I don’t have to. Anyway, I speak English in Mexico often, to my great embarrassment and hypocrisy.

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Reposted by Mordecai Martin

Mordecai Martin @mordecaimartin.net · Nov 14

It is lovely to see a good fat pigeon though

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Reposted by Mordecai Martin

Mordecai Martin @mordecaimartin.net · Nov 15

The two parts of that process, the falling in love and the attempt to capture and replicate the experience, could roughly correspond to the act of reading the work and then writing the translation. But it’s more complex than that.

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Reposted by Mordecai Martin

Mordecai Martin @mordecaimartin.net · Nov 15

I know this is not the case for all translation, everywhere, much of which is subject to market forces that require the surrender of passion, but it is vital to my translation practice that I think of it foremost as a kind of falling in love, and insisting the reader fall in love the same way I did.

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Mordecai Martin @mordecaimartin.net · 1d

HELL YEAH

Mordecai Martin @mordecaimartin.net · 1d

Just remembered this banger of a mistranslation

Mordecai Martin @mordecaimartin.net · Feb 9

Posting this attempt at a translation of some lines from Yosel Cutler because I kinda liked it, even though it was nowhere close to literal, only conveyed a misunderstanding of the metaphor used:

“The sun, that fierce bath house attendant, smacked a fiery oak branch over the shoulders of New York”

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Mordecai Martin @mordecaimartin.net · 1d

I'm working on translating Kristobal Kolon, an epic poem from the Mexico City based Yiddish writer, Jacobo Glantz. Glantz was fascinated by Columbus, as the first European to make the transatlantic crossing that ended up defining his own life. And even he shows the man as cold, ambitious, cruel

Kristen Hauntley CarDEATHzo @khandozo.bsky.social · 2d

There’s a cannibalism section in the intro to my dissertation, which meant I had to read about Columbus (from whom we got the word “cannibal”) and man, that guy was evil in a way that’s legible in every time.

Thomas Lecaque @tlecaque.bsky.social · 2d

Christopher Columbus was dragged back to Spain in chains by a crusading knight, convicted of tyranny and immeasurable cruelty, pardoned by Isabella but banned from returning to Hispaniola.

Fuck Columbus.

Mordecai Martin @mordecaimartin.net · 1d

. . . tempting

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Mordecai Martin @mordecaimartin.net · 1d

Rax, you know damn well this is a well reasoned and moderate take.

Mordecai Martin @mordecaimartin.net · 1d

This could be a joke, or it could be something I'm really thinking

Mordecai Martin @mordecaimartin.net · 1d

organic, natural, spooky. I love it

Mordecai Martin @mordecaimartin.net · 1d

My coworking space got the memo about spoopy season, considered the propositions therein seriously, and made action items

the coffee station at my co-working space, where the spoon rest for the coffee stirrer has been replaced with a spider shaped bowl, and there are three skeleton statues next to the cups

the water cooler at my co-working space, where a mexican style sugar skull sculpture is flanked by two candle holders in the shapes of skeleton hands

Mordecai Martin @mordecaimartin.net · 1d

I am losing my mind, but it's okay, it helps with the defamiliarization

Mordecai Martin @mordecaimartin.net · 1d

We are all Russian Formalists

Rachel Feder @rachelfeder.bsky.social · 2d

Tell me your most unhinged literary opinion, as a little treat

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Mordecai Martin @mordecaimartin.net · 1d

I am trying to repost many fundraisers for Palestinians, because support tends to drop off in the ceasefires, when it is actually possibly even more crucial than before. Please give what you can to Palestinian direct or mutual aid.

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Mordecai Martin @mordecaimartin.net · 2d

Wooooooooow