Along the beach lie bodies
of the finest grade of skin,
the surfers following a far-
flung deity. Yet the stranger
fauna looks back
at me from the hotel mirror.
My bed becomes a cage
of white birds, red throated.
The luggage of my child
holds a blackness I can’t reflect.
This life, cousin to an old
equator, rests in the vast
light, the untethered thing
volunteers my lungs
and limbs. The skin
I slip out of so that I may wear
another; so that I may
mourn an imaginary loss.
I fold my self and place it
in a suitcase
made of banana leaves.
Shireen Madon holds degrees from Columbia University and New York University. Her work is published or forthcoming in Indiana Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Northwest, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Wildness, The Journal, and The Margins, among others. A Kundiman fellow, she has been the recipient of awards from Poets & Writers and the Academy of American Poets. 
