{"id":4402,"date":"2016-10-25T11:53:52","date_gmt":"2016-10-25T11:53:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/?p=4402"},"modified":"2016-10-25T17:06:08","modified_gmt":"2016-10-25T17:06:08","slug":"waiting-kwame-dawes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/?p=4402","title":{"rendered":"WAITING &#8211; Kwame Dawes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the presence of heat, the air<br \/>\npalpable as breath, in there<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nthe heart races, the thing is<br \/>\nwaiting, a kind of skin trembling<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nwaiting for something to come<br \/>\non me, a thing that has no name.<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nWhen I think of the church<br \/>\nI cannot think of walls, I think<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nof the smell of wine, the sweet<br \/>\nintoxication of it, the thing<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nwe sip as if somehow it will<br \/>\nreach deep into the stomach<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nand heal things, clear things,<br \/>\nmy head wet with the idea<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nthat I cannot walk away<br \/>\nfrom God, as if anyone can,<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nand how the fear of his de-<br \/>\nparture, his going away, fills<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nme with the despair of a<br \/>\nstone on an open dry field<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nunder a dull sun, waiting,<br \/>\nwaiting for the return of hope.<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-4556\" src=\"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/headshot-kwame-dawes-images.jpg\" alt=\"headshot-kwame-dawes-images\" width=\"100\" height=\"102\" \/>Kwame Dawes is the author of twenty books of poetry and numerous other books of fiction, criticism, and essays. He has edited over a dozen anthologies. His most recent collection, <em>City of Bones: A Testament <\/em>(Northwestern University Press) will appear in 2016 along with <em>Speak from Here to There<\/em>, a co-written collection of verse with Australian poet John Kinsella, and <em>A Bloom of Stones<\/em>, a tri-lingual anthology of Haitian Poetry written after the earthquake, which he edited. A Spanish-language collection of his poems, titled <em>Vuelo,<\/em> will appear in Mexico in 2016. He is Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner and teaches at the University of Nebraska and the Pacific MFA Program. He is Director of the African Poetry Book Fund and Artistic Director of the Calabash International Literary Festival.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the presence of heat, the air palpable as breath, in there &nbsp; the heart races, the thing is waiting, a kind of skin trembling &nbsp; waiting for something to come on me, a thing that has no name. &nbsp; When I think of the church I cannot think of walls, I think &nbsp; of [&#038;hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2907,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[205],"class_list":["post-4402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry","tag-art-by-lance-johnson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4402","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=4402"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4570,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4402\/revisions\/4570"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}