Done Right

The beneficiary says, / It’s time to lie down. / The petitioner says, / All right. Yes.

Artwork by Kaya Joan 
One bed, squared-off sheets.
One toothbrush, pearl blue,
one toothbrush, pink.
The petitioner shuts the door
and hangs his hat.
The beneficiary says,
It’s time to lie down.
The petitioner says,
All right. Yes.
It has to be done right.
One rococo print.
One belt. One collared shirt.
Draped over
the wicker chair.
Come lie down.
Are you going to do it right?
Oak table, garage sale.
One woman’s dress, not
ironed. One sock.
Where is the other?
Pages of names,
occupations, allegiance.
Everything in its
place. Mist from the beneficiary’s
shower. Does she love
the petitioner?
She steps out, damp as a frog.
The petitioner’s throat
is parched. Will she
pour a glass? One
tumbler, crystal.
Ring of hard water.
White soap.
A note has been made.
A note has been made.


Esther Lin, “Done Right” from Cold Thief Place. Copyright © 2025 by Esther Lin. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books, alicejamesbooks.org.

Esther Lin

Esther Lin was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and lived in the United States as an undocumented immigrant for 21 years. She is the author of Cold Thief Place (Alice James Books, 2025), The Ghost Wife, which won the 2017 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship, and is a coeditor of Here to Stay: Poetry and Prose from the Undocumented Diaspora (HarperCollins 2024). She was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and Writing Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown. Her work won a Pushcart Prize in 2024, and was featured in the Best of the Net 2023 anthology and Best New Poets 2022. Currently she is a critic at large for Poetry Northwest and co-organizes the Undocupoets, which promotes the work of undocumented poets and raises consciousness about the structural barriers that they face in the literary community.

Kaya Joan

Kaya Joan is a multi-disciplinary Afro-Indigenous (Vincentian, Kanien’kehá:ka, Jamaican, settler) artist born and raised in T’karonto, Dish with One Spoon treaty territory, based in what is currently known as Prince Edward County, Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabeg, and Wendat territory. Kaya’s practice explores Black and Indigenous futurity, archival practices, mapping, storytelling, and relationship to place.

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