North Carolina Poetry Society   —   Brockman-Campbell Book Award



The Chair Where I Sat Reading
  While My Parents Made Love


was not a big chair.
I could haul it all over
the house. Usually
I dragged it to the back
screened porch where I sat
trying to make sense
of words, sounding them out,
their wildness crowding
my mouth as I practiced
each knobby line
again and again
until I had it down smooth
as a kiss, rocking
all the while, licking
my lips as if I were grown.
Page after page
like this until at last
I was lifted, lifted
out of my small chair.


The Ecstasy of Regret, University of Arkansas Press, 2002

Reprinted by permission of the University of Arkansas Press.
© Copyright 2002 by Dannye Romine Powell.




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