Mantis 19 (Spring 2021)
"A figure in which secret things confide”
Esther Lin
To be honest, I am not sure Eavan would have liked this poem. One attended her workshop with the knowledge that she would mete out justice, and justice is no kitten. But in our time together, I learned so much about clarity, brevity, and a formal mercilessness that all writers must deal in. For this, I owe her a great deal.
The Bell
It is an elegant act
to choose something
beautiful, then
hide half. Like the virgin
who steps out from
behind a screen,
then retreats.
She must do this
without secret longing
of being admired.
Or the effect is ruined.
Once more my body
ticks. After a long spell
I have returned
to sex. Ointment. Wax.
Every night I fall
into a pond.
Before I chose to
never see him again
there was so much
my husband didn’t
know about me.
What refreshed me?
What kept me aloft
while my father was dying?
He didn’t ask
and I blamed his
incurious nature.
I wish I wanted
only the duck blue
Persian rug.
The secretary, the lyre
chair, they signal
grandeur, gain.
I kept secrets from my husband.
Dull, inhospitable
secrets. But I had them.
For years I believed
I was a belltower.
My mind the bell.
He pulled the ropes
deep within me.
It wasn’t him.
It was me, hoping
it was him.
ESTHER LIN was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and lived in the United States as an undocumented immigrant for 21 years. She is a 2020 Writing Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, 2017–19 Wallace Stegner Fellow, and author of The Ghost Wife (Poetry Society of America 2017). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Hyperallergic, the New England Review, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. Currently she co-organizes for the Undocupoets, which promotes the work of undocumented poets and raises consciousness about the structural barriers they face in the literary community.