Samuel (To himself as he struggles to get closer to Jesus.) Naomi? Well . . . How she could know? She did mek up her mind and gwaan her way time me reach Nazareth. And it nuh mek no sense me try fi tell her now. She wouldn’t keep quiet to hear me anyhow. When dis child Jesus was a likl bwoy me was apprentice to him pa. A real funny ‘prentice! Me was a big man, forty plus, wid one hand twist, de next one chop off at de wrist. But dat man Joseph teach me how to use hammer and saw and chisel wid mi twist hand and mi stump. . . . Still is de lady Mary dat me couldn’t take mi two eye from. And so me watch her, so she watch dat child. And all de while she going on doing what she have to do. Me cyaan ex- plain to yuh. Is like she know dis child is de most precious thing and like—just how him running up and down chasing him ball—she seeing him dying right dere as she look. So me just have to do a likl jostling here today. Me know just now she seeing before her eye what she was looking at for all dem years. See. Is de self- same countenance she gazing on him wid. And him . . . Oh Jesus, don’t look pon her so. She know yuh love her right down to yuh toe. She know yuh never want to leave her so. She know Jah seh is so it haffe go. From yuh was likl Jesus she did know.
Station IV: Jesus Meets His Mother
Feature Date
- November 1, 2023
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“Station IV: Jesus Meets His Mother” by Pamela Mordecai, from A FIERCE GREEN PLACE, copyright 2022 by Pamela Mordecai.
Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Pamela Mordecai writes poetry, plays and fiction. Her most recent book of poetry, de book of Joseph: a performance poem (Mawenzi House, 2022) was one of three poetry collections longlisted for the 2023 OCM BOCAS Prize for Caribbean Literature. Also in 2022, New Directions published A Fierce Green Place: New and Collected Poems. Her New Testament trilogy written in Jamaican Patwa includes de book of Joseph, de book of Mary (Mawenzi House, 2015), and de Man (Sister Vision, 1995), all performance poems. Her poetry has been translated into Romanian, Serbian, Spanish and French, and broadcast over the BBC, CBC and ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission.) A Yaddo Fellow in 2014, Mordecai is well known internationally for her children’s poems, which have been widely anthologized as well as used for teaching language-arts on both sides of the Atlantic, in Africa and in the Far East. In 2015, her debut novel, Red Jacket, was shortlisted for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Award. Her book of short fiction, Pink Icing, published in 2006, was released in 2019 as an audiobook read by herself in ECW Press’s Bespeak Audio Editions. An anthologist whose five collections, edited singly or with others, have focussed on the writing of Jamaican and Caribbean women, her preoccupation in both prose and poetry is womanist. She has also published numerous language arts textbooks and, with her late husband, Martin, Culture and Customs of Jamaica, a reference work. Mordecai is represented by Transatlantic Literary Agency. Video recordings of her poetry are archived at https://mordecai.citl.mun.ca
Cmabridge, Massachusetts
"What to say of Pamela’s poetry? Juicy. The salt juice of living blood. The sweet, liquid whispers of desire dripping from full lips. The acid venom of righteousness spat in the eye of the wicked."
— Nalo Hopkinson
"Mordecai has created motion from epiphanic moments which reject dominant discourses and frameworks…She writes violence, sex, love, mothering, God, landscape, colonialism, racism—no subject is off-limits."
— Alina Stefanescu, Bomb Magazine
"Mordecai illuminates the challenges of life at the crossroads of race, class and gender. Her subjects are diverse, her storytelling immediate—especially in her use of a vibrant, dynamic language that superbly articulates an irrepressible Jamaican spirit."
— The Star
"Mordecai’s work gives us courage and reminds us to live fully, both in language and in the world. It is also specifically a witness to Caribbean history, Jamaican realities, and personal love and grief. It is, in short, brilliantly gifted, blessed, and true."
— Elaine Savory, author of Jean Rhys
"Pamela Mordecai’s facility with language, her striking rhythms and wordplay, and above all her wicked humor, lift her poetry from the pull of madness to the divine."
— Olive Senior, poet laureate of Jamaica
"One of the most brilliant and witty of our poets."
— Kamau Brathwaite
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