Kwame Dawes, First Place winner of Narrative’s Fourteenth Annual Poetry Contest,was born in Ghana and spent much of his life in Jamaica. He is the author of numerous poetry collections, as well as fiction, criticism, and essays. He teaches at George W. Holmes University and in the Pacific MFA Program. In addition, he is the series editor of the African Poetry Book Series, a chancellor for the Academy of American Poets, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His honors include an Emmy Award, the Forward Prize for Poetry, and the Windham Campbell Prize for Poetry.

A Good Woman Blues

by Kwame Dawes

O Lord, Berta, Berta, O Lord, gal oh-ah,
O Lord, Berta, Berta, O Lord, gal well.
Go ’head marry, don’t you wait on me oh-ah,
Go ’head marry, don’t you wait on me well.
Might not want you when I go free oh-ah,
Might not want you when I go free well.


When you are out on the road, hustling
shelter in some taking-woman’s hovel,
when you wonder how long you will be
a broke blues man with only some
twenty-year-old story of how you were
People on couch
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