Diana Anhalt          Return

Chambermaid
First Prize 2007 Poetry Contest

At Duke’s Hotel in London I see my grandmother’s eyes
in your face. You shuffle down the corridor. Behind you
trails your stoop-shouldered shadow pushing a broom.

You could have been born anywhere I suppose:
Chechnya, Mexico, Angola, Vietnam,
but like my grandmother, your nationality is Refugee.
 
And your eyes, like hers, speak of capsized boats,
cramped limbs, pitch stench, midnight trains,
sunstroke, uniforms, barbed wire, crusts.
 
Once you leave Duke’s — its goose feather pillows,
polished banisters, bleached sheets— you cast your eyes
downward, rake the sidewalks for land-mines.