Молитва (Prayer) - Kazimir Malevich / WikiArt

By air, earth, fire, and blood in my veins, I
know something of the devil. He stood
over my sister’s bed. At times God stops
protecting us, explained our minister. 

Of course, this was post-reformation. Neither
gold nor graven image entered my childhood
Assembly of God of the folding chair
and drop ceiling. Our joys were not 

material but ecstatic. In Queens,
the holy spirit floated over us
as tongues of flame. Our voices rose. Our young 

men saw visions, our old men dreamed dreams.
As for the women, we lay on the floor.
We called this being slain in the spirit. 

Esther Lin
Brazilian born Esther Lin is an undocumented poet and the author of Cold Thief Place (Alice James Books, 2025) and The Ghost Wife (Poetry Society of America, 2018), and co-editor of Here to Stay: Poetry and Prose from the Undocumented Diaspora (HarperCollins, 2024). Lin is a critic at large for Poetry Northwest, and co-organize the Undocupoets, which promotes the work of undocumented poets and raises consciousness about the structural barriers that they face in the literary community. She was a Writing Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and her work has been supported by Cité Internationale,, the Poetry Society of America, and Poets House, among other organizations. She won a Pushcart Prize in 2024, and was featured in Best New Poets 2022.