soft launch
like the first man
and god, our fingers touch. I must be
handing you over just-clipped
rosemary sprigs
from the nursery
for the first egg in a one-egg month. it’s eden
you’re cooking, though you’ve gone
viral again and I have a garden-variety
cold from our flight from family, over
christmas and new years’
eve. did I note, you ask, the villain
plankton eats holograms
from photosynthesis. after the dive,
you complain we didn’t see patricio
estrella and the boat captain laughs.
a startling release. you translate well.
Stella Wong
Stella Wong is the author of Stem, forthcoming from Princeton University Press, Spooks, winner of the Saturnalia Books Editors Prize, and American Zero, selected for the Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Prize by Danez Smith. A graduate of Harvard, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and Columbia, Wong’s poems have appeared in Poetry, Colorado Review, Lana Turner, Bennington Review, American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, and more.