Certifiable

Pamela Mordecai

• Publisher: Goose Lane Editions
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781773102733
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Canadian Poetry
• Index: Literature

Toronto writer Pamela Mordecai is a well-known voice in poetry of the Caribbean diaspora. She has long been a popular anthologist, a mentor to other writers, a frequent contributor to literary journals, and a vital link between the literary worlds of Canada and Jamaica; Certifiable presents a maturing vision of women's lives in both of her homes. Certifiable celebrates experience shot through with affection, family attachment, and madness.

The poems in the first section, "Just a Likl Loving, " explore the truths hidden beneath the ideal of love: love as comfort, love as currency, love as deathtrap. "Sister Sequence" embraces the fullness of sisterhood, from the conceptual "sister muse" as a power in the world to the ambivalent love among flesh-and-blood sisters. "Certifiable, " the final section, springs from intimacy with little and big madnesses.

The rhythms and rhymes of the creole soundscape crackle through Certifiable. Mordecai's deft hand wordplay flows through and beyond standard English and the Creole continuum to reveal the characters in Certifiable and record their experiences.

JUS A LIKL LOVIN

Tell Me

So tell me what

you have to give:

I have strong limbs

to haul in castaways

stomach to swallow time

digest the days

salt skin to sail on smooth

like morning sea and tangy

lips for kissing.

I’m well fixed

for all love’s traffic.

And further, I’ve an ear

open around the clock

you know, like those phone

numbers that you call

at any time. And such soft eyes

that smile and ferret out

the truth. Extraordinary eyes

and gentle — you can see yourself.

It’s strong and warm and dark,

this womb I’ve got, and

fertile: you can be a child

and play in there, and if

you fall and hurt yourself

it’s easy to be mended.

I know it sounds a little much

but that’s the way it seems to me.

So tell me, brother,

What have you to give?

Poems Grow

on window ledges or especial corners

of slightly dirty kitchens where rats hide

or offices where men above the street

desert their cyphers of the market place

to track the clouds for rain or ride the wind

guileless as gulls oblivious of the girl

upon the desk who proffers wilting breasts

for a fast lunch. Ah which of us wants

anything but love? And first upon the hill-

side where bare feet in a goat’s wake

avoiding small brown pebbles

know earth as it was made

and women working fields

releasing cotton from the mother tree

milking teats heavy with white

wholesomeness or riding wave

on wave of green cane till

the swell abates and the warm

winds find only calm brown surfaces

thick with the juicy flotsam of the storm

make poems

and men who speak the drum bembe

dundun conga dudups cutter

or blow the brass or play the rhumba box

or lick croix-croix marimba or tack-tack

and women who record all this

to make the tribe for start in blood

send it to school to factory to sea

to office university to death

make poems

and we who write them down

make pictures intermittently

(sweet silhouettes fine profiles

a marked face) but the bright light

that makes these darknesses

moves always always beyond mastery

Griot older than time on Zion Hill

weaving a song into eternity.

Shooting the Horses for Martin Manley

At dawn he rose early again

and went after the horses.

He traps them manes glowing

ripe tangerine like Tintoretto

apocalypse horses-of-morning

snap-snap with his little

black box shoots the world

as it was the first day

green gold with strong legs

and a mane to be tossed

and the damp Mona plains

to be eaten like fire.

And what do you seek

my beloved, in the seed

of the day, when the tenderest

leaf of green light breaks

the earth of the dark?

What coin pulls you

wet from me, clutching

your little machine

obliging you capture

the crucified trees, their crosses

of shadows haunting

the rest of this Sabbath?

Is it wisdom or hope that you stalk?

Would you have me walk

with you?

Shall I sleep as you follow

the hooves of those shadows

the footprints of mountains

the musk of the mist

the tracks of the earliest earth?

I will leave you, my love.

It was Eve who first

murdered the morning.

Dust

And so to bed: on this

sweet tropic evening

sky the colour of red coat plum

what’s there to do

but go to bed?

In round about two minutes’

time three million sperm let loose

going do...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Other books by Pamela Mordecai
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• JUS A LIKL LOVIN
• MY SISTER MUSE
• CERTIFIABLE
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author