This Week's Writing 10/7/23

On Steven Universe, real Christians, submitting to lit mags, and more.

The kitty is coming out of the carrier to look for deals! And, sure enough, we’ve got a 50% off sale going.

As an incentive, I’m going to start a new feature for paid subscribers; I’ll share a track from an album I’ve been listening to this week. So, join up, see what I’ve written this week, listen to some new music!

Here’s what I wrote this week.

If You Read One Thing By Me This Week, Read

Find editors who like you. (Litmag News)

Politics

Stop debating whether Christian nationalism is “really” Christian. (Sojourners)

Kevin McCarthy is GOP incompetence made flesh. (Public Notice)

Suggesting Trump as Speaker shows that the GOP is an authoritarian shell. (Independent)

Courts can’t restrain Trump because they’re not designed to restrain the powerful. (EIH)

On growing up where they didn’t say gay. (EIH)

Cultural Criticism

The Steven Universe movie is a bleak parable. (EIH)

Genesis Owusu makes ugly beautiful funk for freedom. (Chicago Reader)

Poems

5 poems including the one below. (Talking About Strawberries)

This Is the Forest Primeval

You have to know form before you can break the form
as if there is one form to fit and the world
is built out of busts of Mozart
stacked one on top of the other, so that they form
a really big Mozart bust.
Then ten thousand years from now
they fall over and crack apart into a fractal mass
that looks exactly like the bird poop
spackled on the eye of Mozart.
That is the form you must learn there in the ditch
where the worms excrete perfect castings
and laugh in their wormy way
“Ooooh, isn’t that a long fellow?”

As threatened, I’m going to add a feature this week for paid subscribers this week (and maybe every week)? where I share a track from a new (or new to me) album I’ve been listening to. Cheap this week since there’s a 50% off sale ($25/year.)