"El Numero Uno" Opens at the Jamaica School of Drama

Pamela Mordecai's play, El Numero Uno, opens at the School of Drama in Kingston, Jamaica, on 10 March, 2017. 

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About Pamela Mordecai
Pamela Mordecai was born in Jamaica. She has published five collections of poetry, with a sixth, de book of Mary, to appear in fall 2015. Pink Icing, an anthology of short fiction, appeared in 2006, while Red Jacket is her first novel. She has published five children’s books and her poetry for children is widely anthologized – indeed, one of her children’s poems recently appeared in The Guardian (UK) in a list of “top ten poems to remember and recite”. She has also written many textbooks and edited or co-edited groundbreaking anthologies of Caribbean writing. Her poems have been shortlisted for the Canada Writes CBC Poetry Prize and the Bridport Prize (U.K.) and her short fiction for the James Tiptree Jr Literary Award. She is the recipient of the Institute of Jamaica’s Centenary and Bronze Musgrave Medals, the Vic Reid Award for Children’s Writing, and the Burla Award. Pamela lives in Kitchener.

"Shepherds flock round the manger" by Pamela Mordecai

Shepherds flock round the manger

Den some shepherd, seven or eight of dem,

come round, say dem was in de field

wid dem flock and dem get a big fright

when a angel appear out of a great light

so bright likl most it blind dem.

And because dem did know

is Jah-Jah miracle, dem frighten for so!

But angel smile and say dem mustn’t fraid

for de good news him bring

going make people on earth

jump for joy. So of course,

everybody well eager to hear.

Angel say a baby just now born

into David city is Saviour,

Emmanuel, de Anointed One.

And him give dem a sign. Him say dem

going find de baby wrap up tight

in warm clothes lying down in a animal trough.

And same time a big crowd of angel

join up wid de first one. Dem all

praising God and singing,

“Glory to Jah up high in de heavens!

Peace to all down here pon de earth

dat please him!” Talk about a story!

Dem say soon as de angel dem gone

dem set out to look for de baby.

So me show dem my likl boy child,

him face smiling wid sense.

No pikni me know have two eye open so

studying de world right as him born!

All dis while me did glean wid my nose

de liklest shepherd was frighten so bad

him pee up himself. When dem reach,

him did come to de front to look on

de baby, den him hide at de back,

for him shame. So me call him, “Eli!”

(How me know de boy name, Jah to tell!)

“Come, Eli. You want hold de baby?”

When me hand him de child,

him look down on Jesus and him face

catch a fi re like somebody strike it

wid a flint. And same time

sweet algum fill de air

all around and boy and baby flare

in a bright candle glow.

de Book of Mary is now available @ Amazon:

 http://tinyurl.com/perf7lo

de Book of Mary is an epic poem in Jamaican Creole based on the Biblical story of Mary, Joseph and Jesus. The first book of a trilogy, Pamela Mordecai's, de Book of Mary covers Mary's life from her early years, through the arrival of the Archangel Gabriel and the birth of Yeshua, to her death. 

A Chorus of male and female voices provides an accompanying commentary. This exciting Canadian-Jamaican retelling, profound and tragic, yet told with humour and gusto, is a major event, continuing Mordecai's project of hybridizing one of the most significant cultural-religious phenomena in world history. The last book of the trilogy, de Man, about the crucifixion of Jesus, was published by Sister Vision Press in 1995 and is now out of print. The poet is currently working on de book of Joseph, second book of the trilogy.

About Pamela Mordecai

Pamela ('Pam') Mordecai’s previous collections of poetry include Journey Poem (1989); de Man, a performance poem (1995); Certifiable (2001); The True Blue of Islands (2005), and Subversive Sonnets(2012). de book of Mary, from which “Jesus Takes Leave of Mary and Goes  into the Desert” comes, will appear in fall, 2015. In 2006 she published Pink Icing, a collection of short stories; her first novel, Red Jacket, appeared in February, 2015. 

She has edited and co-edited ground-breaking anthologies of Caribbean writing including Jamaica Woman (1980, 1985, with Mervyn Morris); From Our Yard: Jamaican Poetry since Independence (1987); Her True-True Name: An Anthology of Women's Writing from the Caribbean (1989, with Betty Wilson) and Calling Cards: New Poetry from Caribbean/ Canadian Women(2005). Her play, El Numero Uno had its world premiere at the Loraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People in Toronto in 2010. In spring 2014, she was a fellow at the prestigious Yaddo artists' community in upstate New York yaddo.org. Pam and her family immigrated to Canada in 1994. She lives with her husband, Martin, in Kitchener, Ontario

"Mary has a baby boy" by Pamela Mordecai

Mary has a baby boy

Well next thing you know,

de Roman emperor name Caesar

Augustus send out a instruction

dem must count all-o-we!

Dat time in Syria, one man name

Quirinius was governor.

Dem send orders dat every man jack

must find himself back to de town

where him born to write him name

down into a book. So Joseph

set off from Nazareth town where him live

in Galilee country and go to de city of David

what dem call Bethlehem, for is where

him family come from. Him take me

wid him, no mind me big wid baby,

for him say is him response for de two of we.

We leave Judith and Sarah

wid my ma and pa.

At de self same time when we reach

to Bethlehem, dis baby

decide him coming too.

Joseph ask for a room at de inn

but de place pack up right to de brim,

not one likl corner nor crack leave over.

Me sorry for Joseph! Him look high,

him look low till him find a stable and is dere

me born Jesus, wrap him in warm clothes,

give him a first taste of my breast,

and like how we never have no crib, settle him

in de dumb animal feeding box.

***

de Book of Mary is now available @ Amazon:

 http://tinyurl.com/perf7lo

de Book of Mary is an epic poem in Jamaican Creole based on the Biblical story of Mary, Joseph and Jesus. The first book of a trilogy, Pamela Mordecai's 
de Book of Mary covers Mary's life from her early years, through the arrival of the Archangel Gabriel and the birth of Yeshua, to her death. 

A Chorus of male and female voices provides an accompanying commentary. This exciting Canadian-Jamaican retelling, profound and tragic, yet told with humour and gusto, is a major event, continuing Mordecai's project of hybridizing one of the most significant cultural-religious phenomena in world history. The last book of the trilogy, de Man, about the crucifixion of Jesus, was published by Sister Vision Press in 1995 and is now out of print. The poet is currently working on de book of Joseph, second book of the trilogy.


About Pamela Mordecai

Pamela ('Pam') Mordecai’s previous collections of poetry include Journey Poem (1989); de Man, a performance poem (1995); Certifiable (2001); The True Blue of Islands (2005), and Subversive Sonnets(2012). de book of Mary, from which “Jesus Takes Leave of Mary and Goes  into the Desert” comes, will appear in fall, 2015. In 2006 she published Pink Icing, a collection of short stories; her first novel, Red Jacket, appeared in February, 2015. She has edited and co-edited ground-breaking anthologies of Caribbean writing including Jamaica Woman (1980, 1985, with Mervyn Morris); From Our Yard: Jamaican Poetry since Independence (1987); Her True-True Name: An Anthology of Women's Writing from the Caribbean (1989, with Betty Wilson) and Calling Cards: New Poetry from Caribbean/ Canadian Women(2005). Her play, El Numero Uno had its world premiere at the Loraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People in Toronto in 2010. In spring 2014, she was a fellow at the prestigious Yaddo artists' community in upstate New York yaddo.org. Pam and her family immigrated to Canada in 1994. She lives with her husband, Martin, in Kitchener, Ontario.

Excerpt from "de book of Mary" by Pamela Mordecai

JESUS TAKES LEAVE OF MARY AND GOES INTO THE DESERT

Plenty hard to believe my son turn
thirty dis winter season just gone!
Not dat me never watch

every minute, each day, as him grow.
But is like you see and you don’t notice,
and den, all of a sudden dis big

somebody hold you face in him hand
kiss you on you forehead,
say, “Mums, I going now.”

Never mind how much time
I protest and ask why him must go
off alone to a place wid no water, no food,

not a green thing to lift him spirit...
“Mums,” him say “why I would
leave dis house, you and Gran, best cook food

in dis town, my sistren and bredren,
and de whole family, plus de woodworking, too,
all I love, if it was up to me?”

I breathe deep, gaze on him
from him head to him toe, one last time.
“See three loaf of new bread I just bake

in dat bag, and a wineskin your gran
send wid Judith daughter dis morning.
She say, send, tell her when you going.

“I going stop by de yard
as I leaving, to tell Gran goodbye.
Big thanks for de eats and de drink,

but you know my food in de wild
going be fasting and prayer, my Mums.
I sure you don’t want my Papa up so...”

and him turn him eye up to de sky,
“to vex wid me right as I start out?”
“Why you can’t pray here, son?

I will keep food and drink far from you.
I will honour your fast. Is a thing I do for
Joseph plenty times when him was still wid us.”

Him bend down and kiss me,
say, “Mums, dis not de worst.
Me must get ready for some dread things.”

When I go to answer, him put one finger on
my lip. “Hush, Mums,” him repeat,
“believe me, if de choosing was mine

I would stay.”
And him look round de room,
touch de big water jug, scuff de rug

wid him foot, take him staff
and walk through de door –
never turn him head round to look back.


From de book of Mary

About Pamela Mordecai

Pamela ('Pam') Mordecai’s previous collections of poetry include Journey Poem (1989); de Man, a performance poem (1995); Certifiable (2001); The True Blue of Islands (2005), and Subversive Sonnets (2012). de book of Mary, from which “Jesus Takes Leave of Mary and Goes  into the Desert” comes, will appear in fall, 2015. In 2006 she published Pink Icing, a collection of short stories; her first novel, Red Jacket, appeared in February, 2015. She has edited and co-edited ground-breaking anthologies of Caribbean writing including Jamaica Woman (1980, 1985, with Mervyn Morris); From Our Yard: Jamaican Poetry since Independence (1987); Her True-True Name: An Anthology of Women's Writing from the Caribbean (1989, with Betty Wilson) and Calling Cards: New Poetry from Caribbean/ Canadian Women (2005). Her play, El Numero Uno had its world premiere at the Loraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People in Toronto in 2010. In spring 2014, she was a fellow at the prestigious Yaddo artists' community in upstate New York yaddo.org. Pam and her family immigrated to Canada in 1994. She lives with her husband, Martin, in Kitchener, Ontario.

Reading: Pamela Mordecai

Cyril Dabydeen Publishes New Book of Stories

My Multi-Ethnic Friends & Other Stories (Guernica Editions) is Cyril Dabydeen’s latest volume which spans a range of narratives set in Canada and other parts of the world reflecting lived experiences. The Guyanese-born Canadian writer has been publishing for many years; his work has appeared internationally in numerous literary magazines and anthologies.

Here in this new volume are shifting spaces and changing lives  forming the core of  Dabydeen’s stories. Tropical places with verdant greenery are subverted; his sometimes stark images supplant the traditionally exotic. In Canada’s northern hemisphere, Dabydeen’s immigrant and non-immigrant characters delve into memories; whether Greek, Italian,  Russian  or West Indian, for them new situations resonate in northwestern Ontario, Toronto or Detroit. They are even active in a mayoralty race heating up in Ottawa. It’s also a Muslim’s faith tested in Vancouver.Stories such as the title one and others like “Bearing Gifts,” “Believers,” “Look Who’s Coming,” and “In Transit” reflect ironic twists and styles.

This new book follows on Cyril Dabydeen’s previous fiction such as My Brahmin Days and Other Stories (TSAR Publications. Toronto), Play a Song Somebody: New and Selected Stories (Mosaic Press, Toronto), Black Jesus and Other Stories (TSAR), and North of the Equator (Beach Holme, Vancouver).  Dabydeen has also published three short novels, and one full-length novel, Drums of My Flesh (TSAR), nominated for the prestigious IMPAC/Dublin Prize and a short-listed finalist for the City of Ottawa Book Prize. This novel also won the top Guyana Prize for fiction.

Dabydeen’s writing explores the many-sidedness of immigrant life seen as an "outsider"  as he evokes metaphors capturing new ways of feeling laced with their psychological insights.  “Cyril Dabydeen is a writer of global concerns, permanently crossing boundaries,” said Spanish professor Dr  Pilar Somacarrera in Canadian Literature in reviewing his fiction.  "It is the epiphany, the moment of illumination, which comes out of an ordinary experience," writes Peter Nazareth (International Writing Program, University of Iowa) in World Literature Today.  Other critics have described Dabydeen’s work as: "narratives that often contain the lyrical consolidations of images that are the mark of a poet" (Books in Canada); and,  “His stories are seamless between past and present, fantasy and reality....a significant post-colonial writer” (World Literature Today).

A former Poet Laureate of the city (1984-87), Dabydeen has taught creative writing at the University of Ottawa and has published over 15 books, including eight collections of poetry. He also edited the anthologies A Shapely Fire: Changing the Literary Landscape (Mosaic Press, l987), Another Way To Dance: Contemporary Asian Poetry in Canada and the USA (TSAR, 1992), and Beyond Sangre Grande: Caribbean Writing Today (TSAR, 2012). Over the years he has read from his books across Canada, the USA, Cuba and the Caribbean, the UK and Europe, and in India.

For more information, pls. phone:  613/230-7854 (ph.) Or E-mail:cdabydee@uottawa.ca or cdabydeen@ncf.ca

Five Questions With... Pamela Mordecai

Pamela Mordecai, author of Subversive Sonnets

1. What on earth possessed you to write sonnets in this day and age?
Sneaky, Geoff! That’s two questions in one! So, first: What on earth possessed you to write sonnets in this day and age? 
The sonnet has been around a while, six hundred years or so, but we can still consider it modern because, though it’s fallen out of favour a couple times, it’s come back and held its own right up to the present. It’s also adapted over time and proved very versatile. So Sonnette (her German name) is an old girl who’s weathered well! Though free verse or vers libre has been around for much of that time, and some poets have ditched formal poetry once and for all, many poets have kept writing in traditional forms, including the sonnet form. And there are poets like Rainer Maria Rilke and Derek Walcott, for example, who write both free and formal verse. 
The second question is What on earth possessed you to write sonnets in this day and age?
Simplest answer is that I find that having a pre-established form to depend on when I write poetry can be very useful. This time, the sonnet seemed to fit the bill.
2. Why did you choose the title, Subversive Sonnets? It seems almost oxymoronic.   It is oxymoronic. (I specially like the moronic part.) For a long time the working title was Litany on the Line: subversive sonnets in thirty-three sequences. But when I put that title up on FB, friends said, just call it “Subversive Sonnets!” The title is to the point, since I wanted to sabotage and disrupt both the form and content of the sonnet. I wasn’t going to observe the set forms of Petrarch or Shakespeare. I wanted to bang the form about a bit, as others have done before. My banging about was going to be different though. I intended to write in patwa, aka the demotic (from the Greek root demos = the common people, as in democratic), and I was also going to mash up English and/or creole with other languages: Shona, Cree, kwéyol, Spanish, French, Latin. I also wanted to treat everyday subjects in a down-to-earth way – seriously but matter-of-factly. I think of the poems as having a low rather than high seriousness., but a seriousness all the same. There’s one, “Thomas Thistlewood and Tom” about a slave being given Derby’s Dose. That’s about as basic as one can get! But it’s a love poem as well, and sonnets started out as love poems. 
3. Why did you livicate "Lace Makers" to Tony McNeill?
“Lace Makers” was an offering I made to Tony ages ago probably to celebrate those ‘embroidered’ lines at the ends of some of his poems. I don’t know any other poets who use this concrete embroidery in their poetry, though there may be some. That makes him a lace-maker. Also, he’s a good, very old friend. We shared troubled times. He helped me with my writing. I still think he’s the most original poetic talent in the Caribbean, laureates included. And he is (or was) a wild creature, a force of nature and a maker of exquisite things, like Rosie in the poem.
4. Many of the poems exhibit a fear of mania, yet in "Bluesman," there seems to be an embrace. Why the change?
I, who have a collection of poetry called Certifiable, really hope none of the poems ‘exhibit a fear of mania’! Mania is in many cases the condition of honest, deeply engaged people whose chemical or physiological wiring has gone wrong.  Phineas Gage is a good example. There’s a theory of ‘madness’ based on disturbed persons having a direct, unremitting engagement with ‘reality’, which is, of course, so horrible that it drives them to distraction. Antipsychotic drugs are often described as inserting a filter (missing in ‘mad’ people, present in ‘sane’ people) between the psyche and the assaulting world outside, so that the contact with outside stimuli is not so intense. You’re right about the embrace in “Bluesman” but I wonder if the other poems aren’t peculiar embraces of the same sort? “Family Story, only child’s version” ends, “Careful then, how you cross me.” It’s an empowered position on the part of the unbalanced only child, with the mother whom she makes “walk and jabber to herself,” and the grandfather who took his own life. At the end of “No problema, doc, the persona makes the paradoxical statement, “When I do harm, it’s harmlessly.” Well, will she or won’t she harm harmlessly? What does the poem suggest will be the effect if her harmless harming? Isn’t she in control, however frayed her life? Doesn’t she toy with her therapist? Describe the signs of her condition with humour, however twisted? And so on… 
5. Akan, Igbo and Catholic spirituality converge in your collection. Were you uncomfortable with this poetic ecumenism?
It’s Akan, Igbo and Catholic spirituality that converge. Ecumenism is about religion. Religion is the organized affair that ‘s resulted over the centuries in our fighting and killing one another. Spirituality involves the spirit in each of us reaching out, in the way we know best, to The Great Spirit Out There, however we name that spirit. 

About Pamela Mordecai:
Pamela Mordecai writes poetry, fiction and plays. Her four previous collections of poetry are Journey Poem; de man: a performance poem; Certifiable and The True Blue of Islands. Her first collection of short fiction, Pink Icing and Other Stories, appeared in 2006. Her writing for children is widely collected and well known internationally. El Numero Uno, a play for young people, had its world premiere at the Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People in Toronto in 2010. She lives in Kitchener, Ontario.


For more information, please follow this link:  http://tsarbooks.com/TSAR_SubversiveSonnets.htm


Blog Disclosure Policy

Geoffrey Philp’s Blog Spot receives a percentage of the purchase price on anything you buy through links to Amazon, Shambala Books, Hay House, or any of the Google ads or Google Custom Search.

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Disclaimer of Endorsement

The documents posted on this Web site may contain hypertext links or pointers to information created and maintained by other public and private organizations. These links and pointers are provided for visitors' convenience. I do not control or guarantee the accuracy, relevance, timeliness, or completeness of any linked information. Further, the inclusion of links or pointers to other Web sites or agencies is not intended to assign importance to those sites and the information contained therein, nor is it intended to endorse, recommend, or favor any views expressed, or commercial products or services offered on these outside sites, or the organizations sponsoring the sites, by trade name, trademark, manufacture, or otherwise.

Reference in this Web site to any specific commercial products, processes, or services, or the use of any trade, firm or corporation name is for the information and convenience of the site's visitors, and does not constitute endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by this blog.

Pamela Mordecai's Subversive Sonnets

These “subversive sonnets” overhaul the traditional sonnet form to address a range of subjects, from the tenderness of love to the terror of rape, punishment, torture, and murder.

The poet’s quest is to corral iambics into the demotic of Jamaican creoles as well as forms of English past and present. Mordecai has an unfailing ear for voices, for the music that sings and laughs and laments the stories of family, clan, and tribe, thus celebrating life in all its aspects. This is Pamela Mordecai’s fifth collection of poetry.

"Like Pamela Mordecai’s other work, Subversive Sonnets is clever, witty, insightful and linguistically acrobatic. Never one to shy away from difficult themes, Mordecai employs the sonnet form to sing more than ‘little songs’. There is organ music here too as thematically she moves between the bottomless deeps and praise of heaven’s wonders. A courageous, affirmative, and – yes – entertaining read. A wise, highly crafted and satisfying exploration of life deeply lived in all its infinite refractions and life as we’d like it to be." —Olive Senior, author of Dancing Lessons.

“Subversive Sonnets is an astonishing achievement. Beautifully gloved in the materiality of everyday things and not-always everyday places, these poems yet push the reader towards speculative realms of gold, where real places also become mind places and homes of deep feeling. Mordecai readily takes us from the finely personal to wider grief for North America’s, the Caribbean’s, and all our sins, from the saucily bawdy to political fury and horror at a New World turned bitterly, bitingly old, or from a joyous bounce to subsequent personal loss and collective agony that can become skin-crawlingly terrifying. These sonnets are the achievement of years of a poet’s wisdom.”—Timothy J. Reiss, Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature, New York University.

“Subversive Sonnets is sweet, acerbic, scintillating, and sassy. If you want to be right, you can't go wrong in reading these verses that modernize the sonnet, putting it in service of mischief, not only meditation. Mordecai has assembled a collection that is arrogant in its dazzle and provocative in its sizzle. Here's the real poetry, folks: thought given discipline and then set free to sing and/or singe.” — George Elliott Clarke E.J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature, University of Toronto.

About the Author:

Pamela Mordecai writes poetry, fiction and plays. Her four previous collections of poetry are Journey Poem; de man: a performance poem; Certifiable and The True Blue of Islands. Her first collection of short fiction, Pink Icing and Other Stories, appeared in 2006. Her writing for children is widely collected and well known internationally. El Numero Uno, a play for young people, had its world premiere at the Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People in Toronto in 2010. She lives in Kitchener, Ontario.

For more information, please follow this link:  http://tsarbooks.com/TSAR_SubversiveSonnets.htm
***
Blog Disclosure Policy

Geoffrey Philp’s Blog Spot receives a percentage of the purchase price on anything you buy through links to Amazon, Shambala Books, Hay House, or any of the Google ads or Google Custom Search.


***

Disclaimer of Endorsement

The documents posted on this Web site may contain hypertext links or pointers to information created and maintained by other public and private organizations. These links and pointers are provided for visitors' convenience. I do not control or guarantee the accuracy, relevance, timeliness, or completeness of any linked information. Further, the inclusion of links or pointers to other Web sites or agencies is not intended to assign importance to those sites and the information contained therein, nor is it intended to endorse, recommend, or favor any views expressed, or commercial products or services offered on these outside sites, or the organizations sponsoring the sites, by trade name, trademark, manufacture, or otherwise.

Reference in this Web site to any specific commercial products, processes, or services, or the use of any trade, firm or corporation name is for the information and convenience of the site's visitors, and does not constitute endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by this blog.

Poetry Friday: Cynthia James

May Shuttlecock

 
The day before, I’d left the gold leaf candelabras in Cantaro;
white holy ghosts wing-spanned the high blue apse of Santa Cruz;
I was confirmed again, crowned with cascading tulle, wild lilies
and forget-me-nots. ‘Twas May, the rains had not yet
washed away the yellow candles kindling tender fires,
and surfeited, I wondered how and why I’d sunk so low
within the vale to miss the Hubble view and give this up.
The old singer in the corner needed but a shuttle;
I went out and bought, passing the day soft, loud
pedalling the treadle’s lockstitch revolutions.
The next day my flight confirmed, I climbed the clouds,
suction-cupped my ears, swore against all birds, and landed
routinely at Pearson. By evening I’d trod fallen acacia crisps,
windblown bread crumbs, and yellow buttons helix-spiked,
kicking heads sprung in thawed and tilled dogs pats.

***

Cynthia James is a Trinidadian, living for the past 3 years in Toronto. She writes poetry and fiction and her work can be found in publications such as Callaloo,Caribbean Writer and The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse.





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Black Canadian Writers @ CBC Books

 http://www.cbc.ca/books/black-canadian-literature.html 

Throughout February and March, literary journalist, teacher and author Donna Bailey Nurse will be blogging for CBC Books about black Canadian writers and their important works.





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Thank you!

“The Sugar Clock” by Cynthia James

 

This setting back and forwarding
the clock, lengthening and shortening time,
is not in my experience
 
I learned and laboured under one timepiece,
the sugar clock, somewhere near the great house
deep in the crevice of my ear still going strong
 
the wailing ICTA horn blaring at five to seven, five to twelve and five to four;
more than a century of wailing - (1820s to 1921 - estate,
usine - plantation time seems distant!)
 
when to pick up tools, when to lay them down and when to lunch -
I have no picture of this timepiece, no sense of what it was,
but in the bowel of the you-we sugar factory, sure it was!
 
Some say ‘twas pressured steam, but in my mind
it was a round alarm with finger lever, iron, brass or shiny silver,
nippled like the cycle bell Works workers rode out, clicking after it went off.
 
Who pulled it? Or was it automatic?
Did its wail wind round the campus weekends, too, when I was gone?
Or did absentee hands run round its face invisibly
 
like on these fancy modern digitals?
Halfway between a warning and rebellion
sometimes it sounded like a conch! but no, it was no conch,
 
or else I’d seen a Maroon man, built say like the Orisha Andrew,
master drummer, going in and out.
I moved in step with it, shell shocked.
 
Who turned it off? And when?
Did its sly slumbering regime rankle you-we historians?
Who knows the what and why, the grip of memory?
 
Oriens Ex Occidente Lux
Did it shut off on its accord when the steam engine rusted?
When did it cease to be that relic of “the bulwark that we watch” way south?
 
 
 
©Cynthia James 2012

 
 
 
Cynthia James is a Trinidadian, living for the past 3 years in Toronto. She writes poetry and fiction and her work can be found in publications such as Callaloo, Caribbean Writer and The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse.

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"Cutting Lent" by Cynthia James

Cutting Lent


We’d cut lent, little finger hooked like chain link, 
talk for-fended; and if you couldn’t or forgot 
to hold it in, you’d face the consequences 


mouth open, jackass jawbone dropping, 
better say it safe, unsaid in the roaming mind, 
self-witness only to itself, than witless in the wind;


one day respite, thank St. Joseph;  but if you were really good, 
you did the whole forty days, Palm Sunday, Passion Week,  
waited for the hot cross buns and image of a ship-shape forming


on the hot stone of a cracked Good Friday egg. But first the ashes;
you had to hang Shrove Tuesday’s clang of cowbells on a crossed stave. 
New dispensation; carne vale; that long time Lent is here again.




© Cynthia James, February 2012

 
Cynthia James is a Trinidadian, living for the past 3 years in Toronto. She writes poetry and fiction and her work can be found in publications such as Callaloo, Caribbean Writer and The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse.




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"Buxton Lady Under Lock Down" by Cynthia James

Buxton Lady Under Lock Down

 

we would sit in the elephant ear of a marble queen, 
icing dusting the skylight, listening to the wattle 
wheezing through the atrium, the karaoke 
tinkle of Ol’Virginny, Ol’ Kentucky Home inside


warm apple cider drunk, she’d say, “Those songs 
we learnt in school, is only when I come I understand. 
But I is from Kaywana stock; this place make you 
more black. You must bring me some cocoa butter 


when you coming next time,” rubbing Buxton spice;
we watched cars swish, slip, slurping past grey fingered trees
“Was a day like this that send me here; white, no headlights; 
I didn’t see, nobody see, nobody say, nobody talk for me; he


burn like crisp; if wasn’t for my Buxton pride I dead already.”
but summer she was different; then we went out on Wheel-Trans. 
“Look,” she says, “Imagine me who make with nail, tinin and 
hammer, grater from scratch, buying coconut in frozen 


quarter pound square pack. You know bout metamgee?  
conkie? A tumbler of swank, Man, down the hatch!”
Then we would join the ladies for some checkers, bingo, 
even take in the fashion show. “Is a man you know! 


Wait till she start to strip. We ask the recreation people 
for her every year.” And she shouting loud, “Go more! 
Take off the shirt!” And bad talk Victor, her one and only son,
full of guile who just so, she-say-he-say, “Let’s go for a drive ...”


but she going back for her gold ring on the bureau
the Deceased Egbert give her. Now that was man!
“I could teach you the computer; you’ll like Facebook,”
“Unh-unh,” she said, “is a long long way to Tipperary.
 Dawg a lay down, ashes cold.”

©Cynthia James 2012




 
About Cynthia James

 
Cynthia James is a Trinidadian, living for the past 3 years in Toronto. She writes poetry and fiction and her work can be found in publications such as Callaloo, Caribbean Writer and The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse.
 

***

"All Saints - November 2011" by Cynthia James

All Saints - November 2011

causa latet vis est notissima - Ovid

the cause is hidden, but its force is very well known

My Dear GPS

You’ve asked me to confirm; thus I assure

the tremors you experience underground

are not the elephants of Hannibal, nor is

Vesuvius the cause. The cacophony awakening

Hades, I’m afraid, and Charon’s frequent trips

across the Styx have quite a different source.

The old girl’s quiescent these past sixty-seven

years. Nonetheless, bombs and fire flashes rain

from up above with pulverizing might, such that

Lower Sirtis mirrors the Pompeii we last saw.

Myriad Homeric and Virgilian versions abound,

but, My Honourable Uncle, since you ask:

Alas! Priam and Hector again were cornered.

the rebels and the rabble both claim triumph;

but all that’s certain (perhaps not in disorder)

is that both were dragged through the streets;

then slain; then photographed for posterity with

V-signs. There were long lines while all rejoiced.

I saw the golden gun;

I heard the berried W-A-A-W;

viewer caution was advised, but old voyeur of our

munera, I watched it all on HD and in 3-D, I might add,

(complicit, some opine, oblivious of our tradition)

from a distance like in that old Gold-Midler song.

But that’s old news in the coliseum -

just like these that I’ll be brief about:

Carthage and Alexandria still under siege;

sorry for so long a letter, but an earthquake

also shook a pilate’s podium while he washed

his hands; in Otta-war as the broadcasters say,

a bunch of crazy people last month chanted

“Arrest George Bush”; serpentine floods

challenge the promise given Noah, wash away

Thailand and Guatemala; even in Paradise,

all man and woman under heavy manners –

curfew in their tail for more than six months.

Yet take comfort; the legacy of Caesar, perhaps

a little rattled, nonetheless,  remains intact.

This letter pales compared with multifarious

more illustrious troubadour accounts;

but rest assured, you can depend on me,

My Venerable Uncle, there’s more to come

Farewell

P

© Cynthia James, November, 2011

About Cynthia James

Cynthia James is a Trinidadian, living for the past 3 years in Toronto. She writes poetry and fiction and her work can be found in publications such as Callaloo, Caribbean Writer and The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse