Two Poems

Dramatic Monologue as Wendy Carlos

I do prefer cyberpunk
mermaids because they’re realistic

in terms of rust and advancement.
not impossible to attain. yes, it is

the tech of the future but the windows are grimy
the hyperspeed button falls off,

and the shipwreck’s hinges squeak. I
have a beautiful self-image

as the girl from the ring, with my hair chandelier
pretty as a batik, forbidding

designs of humans and animals.
so, the tuba footfalls of a giant. the

melting gothic castle. the party is
over when the dirge dregs. the best

things to score are
like us, unnumbered.

Dramatic Monologue as Pauline Oliveros

what are you picking up? a lot of pink
noise and feedback. even the punishment

is a square. the good doctor is trying to help
but you were born on a wednesday.

the blue opera alien is singing
rubber again. under the dictator’s hip of trazodone,

the dreams got worse. the ashen cinderella
dresses in the mood you’re getting.

more waking, more lizard drips.
the wolves are unsettled by the consistency

of your screaming. they can only be indicative
of deep rooted trauma. deep as potato tubers.

just as hairy. we’re all forked
as storage organs. time to get us in the ground.

___________

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, the LA Review of Books, and more.