{"id":241,"date":"2013-11-29T14:57:16","date_gmt":"2013-11-29T14:57:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/?p=241"},"modified":"2014-01-17T15:46:26","modified_gmt":"2014-01-17T15:46:26","slug":"grandson-to-grandmother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/?p=241","title":{"rendered":"GRANDSON TO GRANDMOTHER – Quassan Castro"},"content":{"rendered":"

Grandmother,
\nYou sit,
\nWrapped in your Persian melon-colored blanket,
\nRock back and forth,
\nOn that old rusty country porch,
\nWhom the neighbors across the street
\nOnce called, Rusty Oak.
\nSpit tobacco. Hair braids in pigtails.
\nSit postured, on the porch where we,
\nOften bow our heads together.
\n 
\nMy head pressed downward,
\nEyes misty,
\nYou grab my chin and raise it to the sky.
\nGrandmother, those words, spoken so softly,
\nYet so stern.
\nI remember, you said:
\nMy bronze child,<\/i>
\nDon\u2019t you look at your life upside down,<\/i>
\nYou got every bit of courage in you<\/i>
\nTo step upright and<\/i>
\nPoke your chest to the weary sky. <\/i>
\nYou must have faith before you walk. <\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Quassan<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Quassan T. Castro has a MFA in Creative Writing from Fairleigh Dickinson University. \u00a0He is a journalist, columnist, entertainment and culture critic, poet and author. His work ranges from personal essays, fiction, poetry, music and book reviews, celebrity interviews and culture writing.\u00a0 Quassan is social media publicist for Dr. bell hooks.\u00a0His works have been featured in top national magazines and top online outlets that include Essence Magazine, Essence Magazine Online, Heart and Soul Magazine Online, BET (Black Entertainment Television), Black Enterprise Online, Jet Magazine Online, National Education Association and Huffington Post. \u00a0 His\u00a0work has published in several college literary anthologies including The Sundance Writer: A Rhetoric Handbook, Get Writing: Sentences and Paragraphs, Sundance Choice Composition and Structured Reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Grandmother, You sit, Wrapped in your Persian melon-colored blanket, Rock back and forth, On that old rusty country porch, Whom the neighbors across the street Once called, Rusty Oak. Spit tobacco. Hair braids in pigtails. Sit postured, on the porch where we, Often bow our heads together.   My head pressed downward, Eyes misty, You [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":878,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[55,42],"class_list":["post-241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry","tag-quassan-castro-art","tag-romare-bearden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=241"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1553,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions\/1553"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}