Nicholas Christopher(b. 1951)
Far from Home
A broken-down hotel on an inhospitable sea,
and behind it, a field of thorns in which
a man wearing white gloves is digging a hole
with the exact proportions of a grave.
Down the hall, the young chambermaid
is staring into a basin full of red water.
Her hair is white and her hands are wrinkled.
A shark tooth dangles from her ear.
In the evening she leaves a tray by my door:
a glass, a carafe of water, and a bottle
containing liquor that swirls like mist.
Mornings she brings bitter tea and a map.
Always the same map—not of the island
we're on, but of one I left long ago.
15 (If it were this island, I wouldn't know,
having never ventured from the hotel.)
There is a bowl of black seashells by my bed.
The maps—thirteen of them—are stacked
between the lamp that flickers like a star
and the quartz lions veined with light.
The clerk at the front desk could be a statue.
His dark glasses reflect the bare lobby,
its leafless plants and shuttered windows.
At his fingertips is a tumbler filled with dust.
The day I check out, the other guests line
the balcony, wrapped in sheets, speaking
a language I've never heard—sibilant as
the sea, but with no two words sounding alike.
The man in white gloves appears, to carry
my suitcase, and pauses before a mirror
in which I see, not his image, but towering
iron waves, rising to mesh with an iron sky.
JRIE GRAHAM
b. 1951