Happy Birthday, Kwame Dawes! | Poems Rethabile Likes
🎂 Happy Birthday, Kwame Dawes!
Poet • Novelist • Critic • born 28 July 1962
Today we celebrate the birthday of Kwame Dawes — a Ghanaian-Jamaican poet, novelist, and critic. Here is his tender and devastating poem, "Cleaning," an act of love and dignity between a son and his father.
Cleaning
After a while, you don't bother
with the brief and the pajamas;
you leave him on the sheet,
make him shit himself, then
shift over to the other side
until I can come, lift up
the body, wipe his bottom
with a soft cotton cloth, bundle
up the sheet with two more
in the corner, straighten
out the plastic over the mattress—
sometimes you have to wipe
it, too, then put a towel
under him until the other
sheet dry, and all the time,
you don't say a word,
you don't ask for nothing.
You let your hand brush
against your father's back
and pray his dignity will last
another day. This is how
a man must care for his father;
quiet, casual, and steady.
Kwame Dawes (b. 1962) is a Ghanaian-Jamaican poet, novelist, and critic. He is the author of numerous collections, including Progeny of Air (1994), Gomer's Song (2007), and City of Bones: A Testament (2017). He is a professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the founding director of the African Poetry Book Fund. His work explores identity, memory, and the complexities of family.
Read more: Pulitzer Center • ThriftBooks
Read more: Pulitzer Center • ThriftBooks
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