Mad Gals by Pamela Mordecai why a child of thirteen, maybe fourteen, her blood just managed, her eyes never scandalized by a man’s nakedness? why give a teenager dread work carrying a belly through the neck-jerking natter day by day ballooning of her baby bulge? the fancy messenger made up for it, did he? that’s assuming he came in frippery. those guys have been known to arrive looking well very earthy baby-making might have cost her life and limb death by stoning prescribed for both adulterous parties by Deuteronomy and Leviticus she standing in the door of her father’s house and him? well nowhere near most of the time as in this case he was not... God Almighty making a joke as so often knowing most of us won’t get it... wouldn’t someone older with a bit more experience have been less at risk? but maybe recklessness was the point Eve one kind of mad gal Mary another?
Pamela Mordecai is a Jamaican Canadian poet who often writes in Patwa or Creole inflected English. She writes across genres — long fiction, short fiction, poetry, plays, non-fiction — for children and adults. She has published nine books of poetry, most recently A FIERCE GREEN PLACE (New Directions, 2022) and DE BOOK OF JOSEPH (Mawenzi House, 2022), third in a series in Jamaican Creole about the life and death of Jesus, DE MAN and DE BOOK OF MARY being the first two books. All three books are subtitled: A PERFORMANCE POEM.
1 September 1864
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