Natasha Marin hails from Trinidad by way of Canada. She holds degrees in English from Tufts University and the University of Texas, respectively. She is a participant in the Callaloo Writers' Workshops, a Cave Canem Fellow, and an Affilachian poet. Her work has been published in several magazines including Borderlands, the International Poetry Review, the Southern Indiana Review, and the Midwest Quarterly. She is forthcoming in the Feminist Studies Journal and the South Carolina Review. 

The Handkerchief 

Calls to mind
the tinny wail
of hymens
being stretched
then torn open.  

Small children
open gifts
this way. 

It reminds me
of packed dirt floors
painted to a dullegg
yolk shine—
each one
like a lazy yellow eye
leaking blood. 

Then a man emerges
with a pocked bedsheet
in his hands.  

When the wind finds
his jaw geometric
with angles, he lets
the fabric unfurl—
catching
like fire. 

Her shame
burns this way:
in public. 

Her shame
burns this way:
in private. 

I wonder, what is so precious
that it can’t be lost?