EthicalDative

Upon this Slab Build Ye a Breakaway Church

Posted on February 13, 2026 by JMN

If I named God, I would name him more like a boat
than a dog, but more like a dog than a dead relative.
(Leslie Sainz, from “When I imitate myself, I am a number of certain people,” Poetry, January-February 2026)

The God I grew up with promises the wicked they’ll experience undying agony after they die. There’s a better post-death outlook for the non-wicked. By rights the godfearing fear God.

Is it possible to shop Gods? There’s a jealous God and an indulgent God. One personal and familiar, One high-and-mighty, stern but loving, vice versa. An almighty more-than-One, with many shapes or None, an ever-All-ness and back-of-Beyond-ness. There’s faith in a Her, in a Them, in the “primitive” God of the “savage,” and in ritual devoid of the divine altogether.

Capitalize what you will, it’s able to be rendered cult. Religion walks on water and rules the sky.

What about richness of possibility, plausibility, ineffability, of god -head and -hood and -lessness that’s conceivable or inconceivable, actual and latent, plural or unitary, unbelievable and doxological, above all supremely stateless? Does worship need sharp elbows?

Posted in Anthology | Tagged language, rhetoric, spirituality | Leave a comment

Translation of ‘October With Wings’ by Azurea20

Posted on February 7, 2026 by JMN

“Translating a piece of verse can be the sincerest way of reading it.”
Huda J. Fakhreddine

No sé. I don’t know. They’re important words in any language. I know that I feel, if not what I feel, when a poem goads me into articulating what skirts the edges of speech. That sentence cloaks confusion in some kind of dress. It may be to say that I don’t know what the poem says other than it speaks to me — and this is irony — wordlessly. What’s conveyed floats over, under, around and through the friction it generates on the page. Azurea’s Spanish has a pellucid, propulsive quality that crests like a swell summoning me to body-surf it in English. That’s the unruliest simile I can fabricate for the sweet consternation induced by intruding upon someone else’s fugitive lyric.

OCTOBER WITH WINGS
by Azurea20 translated from Spanish by JMN

Before her
the greatest certitude lacks
importance

and the voice which names her
ceases to be mine.

How to abandon the me.
How to abandon the me,
to create from nothing.
To be a god, or goddess.
To dig down deep
where pronouns don’t exist,
digging to where the verb is,
where the act is conjugated,
where the tatters of life
are mute, at rest,
ceasing to air their rifts.

What’s conjured steers between
a school of synchronized fish,
a forest of silent beeches,
an unfathomed ocean,
a mountain sheltering misfortune.
I don’t know.

Maybe the embrace
of river with sea…
and Certitude.
Certitude, I say.

Like an October with wings.

OCTUBRE CON ALAS
Azurea20

Frente a ella,
la mayor certeza carece
de importancia

y la voz que la nombra
deja de ser mía.

Cómo abandonar el yo.
Cómo abandonar el yo,
crear de la nada.
Ser un dios, una diosa.
Cavar hondo donde
no existen los pronombres;
cavar donde existe el verbo,
donde el acto se conjuga,
donde los harapos de la vida
enmudezcan, reposen,
dejen de airear sus desgarros.

Camina el conjuro entre
un bancal de peces sincronizados,
un bosque de hayas silenciosas,
un océano incomprendido,
un monte que acoja la desdicha.
No sé.

Tal vez el abrazo
del río con el mar…
y la Certeza.
Digo: la Certeza.

Como un octubre con alas.

Posted in Anthology | Tagged language, poetry, Spanish-English, translation | 2 Comments

Annals of Journalism

Posted on February 4, 2026 by JMN

The gentleman from Kentucky rises to… say something.

Some burger joint names are hard to pin down. The following excerpt is from MySA (“My San Antonio”).

Whataburger rival ramps up expansion with new $1M Texas outpost. This is the third Shack Shack coming to the Austin area in 2026.
By Cristela Jones,
Austin Trending Reporter
Jan 9, 2026

A fast-growing New York City-based burger joint appears to be ramping up expansion plans in Central Texas. Shake Shake has just set moves for another Austin-area location within the next two years.

Last spring, Shake Shake filed a TDLR for its first $980,000 location in Georgetown, a suburb about 34 miles north of Austin. Now, the chain will be moving into another Williamson County city down the road.

[Elsewhere the article nails it: Shake Shack!]

Posted in Quotations | Tagged journalism, language | 4 Comments

Fire in the Casus Belly

Posted on February 1, 2026 by JMN

The Secretary of War and the Commander of War mustered the Brass at the Department of War.

First the SOW
Then the COW
Settled the hash
Good and proper
Of the Brass
At the DOW.
B-B-B-BOOM!
K-K-K-POW!
NOBEL FOR PEACE!
N-N-N-NOW!

Posted in Anthology, Commentary | Tagged doggerel, language | 3 Comments

Three Rules With Tolerances

Posted on January 26, 2026 by JMN

**ḍaḥik-nā ḍiḥkaẗ(an) ka-l-ẖamr(i)** “We laughed a laughter like the wine.” The phrase is from a poem by Haidar Al Abdullah titled **Tarajjal yā ḥiṣān**. I like to translate the title as “Make Like a Man, O Horse,” and the phrase more freely as “We spilt laughter like wine.” Their respective published translations by Yaseen Noorani are *Go Dismounted Like a Man, Horse* and *We let out a vinous peal of laughter*. (From *Tracing the Ether: Contemporary Poetry from Saudi Arabia*, ed. Moneera Al-Ghadeer, Syracuse University Press, 2026.)

RULE OF GOLD
Treat others like you want to be treated.

RULE OF IRON
Believe in Me or else.

RULE OF THUMB
Steer into the skid.

TOLERANCES
“Every trade works to different tolerances. Steel workers aim to be accurate within half an inch; carpenters a quarter of an inch; sheetrockers an eighth of an inch; and stone workers a sixteenth.”
(Burkhard Bilger, “The Art of Building the Impossible,” The New Yorker.)

Posted in Anthology, Commentary, Quotations | Tagged language, miscellaneous, poetry, rhetoric | 2 Comments

Europa to Americus: ‘Yassuh, Massah!’

Posted on January 23, 2026 by JMN

The Greek derivatives in English spurt from a font of abstruse vocables that gives us, say, “dithyramb” — “a passionate or inflated speech, poem or other writing.” It’s a short hop to coinage such as “pithyramb” — “a passionate or inflated instance of pith” — proffered by… wait for it… a “pithyrambo.”

Take Hemingway, whom many of us cite unread. One of his characters says something like “bankruptcy comes on gradually, then all of a sudden.” A certain Ms. Clausing quoted in The Times pithyrambed it shamelessly:

… Ms. Clausing, the U.C.L.A. economist, warned against assuming that just because Mr. Trump’s policies haven’t harmed the economy yet, they never will. “The long run takes a long time to arrive, and when it comes it comes with astonishing swiftness,” she said.

As we await the long run’s arrival let’s kill some time tinkering with Woody’s ditty:

THIS LAND IS OUR LAND
(Call and Response)

This land is our land
(That land is our land)
From th’ shores of Green Land
(To th’ Cuban Eye Land)

From fair New Found Land
(Where’er we lay hand)
To th’ Hemisphere’s End
(Or where our troops land)

Your land is our land
(There is our Home Land)
(ICE Land is MY Land)
(Mar-a-La-GO-Land)

All real estate grand
(A place to grandstand)
Snooty Switzer-land
(Little Saint James Land)

All mine to COM-mand
(Kiss thy behind land)
The former Rhine Land
(All thine to DE-mand)

Posted in Anthology | Tagged doggerel, language, rhetoric | 6 Comments

Keep What Holds the Light Unbroken

Posted on January 16, 2026 by JMN

The Gleb on a Gnat’s Vesicle
— After Donne.

How do we rue you, cunning tongue?
Grant us, sir, spit out a lung.
Perdition’s grease fire. Odium’s pimp.
Perversity’s pal. Plague’s piece of tail.
Malice engorged. Enormity in a suit.
Torrent of keening. Badmouth bard.
Punch down, PUNCH HARD!

Swervy weaver. Voyeur warrior.
Randy prancer. Double downer.
Pope of payback. FULMINATOR!
Pulling woolster. Sharp practitioner.
Dirty trickster. Spurning truther.
Crimson wattle. Rights reneger.
Dodge disaster. CASTIGATOR!

Hustle’s apostle. Carnage’s barker.
Deferment’s dandy. Decency’s bruise.
Putter’s potentate. Pageant’s peepster.
Casino’s crap shot. Crypto’s mule.
Columbia’s thorn. Liberty’s blindfold.
Spurred heel. Sultan of feel.
Man of steal. HELL OF A DEAL!

Posted in Anthology | Tagged doggerel, rhetoric | 2 Comments

And That’s Okay, But Don’t Worry, It’s Under Control’

Posted on January 13, 2026 by JMN

Remarks by podcaster Jason Staples have led me to ponder the notion of “original” language relative to scriptures widely known via translation. My attention was drawn to Staples’s comment that the Book of Revelations “has mixed metaphors all over the place.”

… The Greek of Revelations comes off as very clumsy, reads like someone who is not exactly a native Greek speaker, or… well trained… Greek writer. This is someone who probably is multilingual and probably a Semitic speaker of some sort who is writing in this way.

Where Staples gooses the matter to the throaty pitch of a hermeneutical Harley is in asserting that “the messiness of it is also part of the design.”

And I think there are certain places where the grammar and so on is clumsy in ways that force you to kind of have to grapple with that aspect of it. I think the messiness of it is also part of the design, even, that forced you to deal with those mixed metaphors…

The rhetoricians will have a Greek term filtered through Latin for argument premised on convictedness drawing foreordained conclusion qualified by contingent disclaiming. Still, I’m attracted to the venture of tilting with refractory text through a grammatical lens as a discipline that courts illumination.

There’s that moment where the thunder — he hears “the thunders” — and he’s told, “Don’t write that down! Seal that up!” And that in some ways is I think the book communicating that, like, look, there’s a lot about this stuff that you’re just not going to be able to get, and that’s okay. There is a mystery that from the earthly perspective, from this side of heaven, you’re just, you’re not going to really fully understand, you have to get the angle from, you know, from heaven down, you have to get the God’s eye view to understand, to hear what’s going on, and you don’t have that luxury, but don’t worry, it’s under control.

This sort of language stymies communicative logic, but poetically and confessionally it has a grappling aspect not easily discounted.

Posted in Commentary, Quotations | Tagged language, rhetoric, translation | 2 Comments

They Swoop to Conquer

Posted on January 6, 2026 by JMN

The Gods:
Lord Elon of X. Mighty Mark of Meta. Sundering Sundar of Alphabet. Looming Larry of Oracle. Jacked Jeff of Amazon. Titanic Tim of Apple

The Chorus:
Thiel, Andreessen, Ramaswamy

The Jesters:
Rogan, Hannity, Carlson

The Company:
MAGA

The Play:
“Narcissus at Davos”

Posted in Anthology | Tagged Branded Figments | Leave a comment

‘A Hardheaded Little Nobody With a Dream’

Posted on January 4, 2026 by JMN

Ms. Crump after a race at Churchill Downs in 1970. Credit… Associated Press. [New York Times caption and illustration]

“I never worry when I ride.”

(Diane Crump, age 21)

Many male officials considered women to lack the strength and composure to control a thoroughbred as it galloped along at 40 miles an hour.

It was an era in which aspiring female jockeys were often dismissed as “jockettes.” Six male jockeys withdrew from her first race and were replaced. “I didn’t care how the jockeys felt,” Crump told her biographer… “I figured they had to get over it.”

Crump, who later operated a sales service for horse buyers and provided her dachshunds as therapy dogs for the ill and the needy, described herself “as a hardheaded little nobody with a dream that I wouldn’t let die… Galloping a great racehorse gives you a powerful feeling,” she told The Times. “I gave all the horses I rode my heart, and they gave me theirs.”

(Jeré Longman, “Diane Crump, First Woman to Ride in Kentucky Derby, Dies at 77,” New York Times, 1-2-26)

Posted in Quotations | Tagged language, miscellaneous | 1 Comment