This Week's Writing 3/2/26
Special bonus cat week
My schedule is a bit off this week since I’m visiting relatives, including Oliver, a very attractive cat.
Here’s what I wrote this week.
Politics
Trump targets SCOTUS for stochastic terror. (Public Notice)
Defeating Trump isn’t enough. (EIH)
You do not have to hand it to Tucker Carlson (EIH)
Platner vs. Stratton: who’s allowed anti establishment branding. (EIH)
Trump’s strategy is always terror. (EIH)
Cultural criticism
Soderbergh’s The Good German is the anti-Casablanca. (Splice Today)
The new Wuthering Heights is really racist. (Chicago Reader)
The weird happy colonialism of Predator: Badlands. (EIH)
Running Man covers the same boring ground. (EIH)
The happy body horror of Reanimator. (EIH)
Poetry
Two poems, one of which is below. (SHINE)
Ain’t No Mountain High Enough
(for Mobley)Tammi Terrell dated James Brown
who beat her bloody
when she left one of his sets early.
She escaped him at last, and dated David Ruffin
of the Temptations, who beat her also.
He hit her in the head with his motorcycle helmet.
She escaped him at last and sang with Marvin Gaye.
Marvin’s father beat him relentlessly.
Marvin described Marvin Gay, Sr. as
“an all-cruel, changeable, cruel and all-powerful king.”
Marvin sang to Tammi,
“don’t worry baby.”
Tammi sang to Marvin, “Just call my name,
you don’t have to worry.”
Tammi got brain cancer and died at 24.
Marvin’s father shot him. He died at 44.
Throughout their lives,
they were both often treated
as if they had no rights
that white people were bound to respect.
But when they sang “don’t worry”,
they sounded like they meant it.
Marvin’s voice floated up, higher than a mountain.
Tammi’s rumbled low, deeper than a valley.
They said they would save each other.
They said they would save you.
Motown makes it feel
like there’s no sorrow in the world.
Jewish poeming. (Synchronized Chaos)
Diaspora
when you are a tree without any roots you fall right over
and fall here and there and there and here
turning over and over without roots
till your neighbors run out with pots of soil
we are each other’s roots
Old singer/songwriter poeming. (Five Fleas)
On Reading Leonard Cohen’s The Flame
I am guided by your beauty
to a page I don’t recall
Is it meaning? Is it duty?
I don’t know—
the print’s too small.
A heartfelt koan. (Five Fleas)
the best part of waking up
is going back to sleep
