Dannye Romine Powell
Poet

"A grant of $8,000 will allow me several months off from work to write each day, without dropping the creative thread. I will appreciate and relish the time to work, day by day, as a poet, perhaps recapturing my artistic momentum of 1988 when, thanks to a three-month sabbatical from my newspaper work, I was able to make headway on my first collection of poems."

Dannye Romine Powell has a BA in English from Florida State University. She is a news columnist for The Charlotte Observer and makes her home in Charlotte.

Return to the NC Artist Grant
Award Recipients for 1999-2000


The Other Life

The one by the ocean,
the upstairs room with a view,
second row, an outside wooden stair.
I could have chosen that one,
climbing each night after work,
as a waitress maybe
or a clerk, gauzy skirt whispering
at my ankle. Inside, one lamp
left burning, I settle cross-legged
on the bed, emptying quarters
into silvery pools, rolling them
into rounds of fives for the rent,
tens for the train trip to Arizona n~ next winter. Now, before supper,
filling the tub as the thin curtain drifts out over the TV, revealing stars,
scattering last night's ashes.
All this. Instead, I live inland,
in the yellow house on the corner
across from the park. That's where
I am now, in the white chair
by the upstairs window,
pin oaks splashing the panes.
Don't misunderstand. I'm here by consent. I was simply trying to remember
the exact dimensions of longing.


DANNYE ROMINE POWELL