Stella Wong

ship in a bottle

janet fish is for
finding your wishes at the bottom

of a wineglass. a win, finding
a snow-furred miracle (freestanding

house) in midtown manhattan,
walking goldilocks-like

into an unlocked door,
by a man suited in the color of cabernet, right

after the spills on your cream sofa.
some things are like this —

not for us. the name janet. bluebeard
intruders. golden fishes.

Stella Wong is the author of 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 and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Wong’s poems have appeared in POETRY, Colorado Review, Lana Turner, Bennington Review, Denver Quarterly, the LA Review of Books, and more.