Stella Wong

DEPORTATION

J is scared, an alien feeling
so we compose
a rhapsody in the key of
the wind’s song. Without the haves
and the holds, and the holding
cells, J prays
for some divine order.
Would they deport a butterfly, who knows
how to carry wishes
to the ears of gods.
We can preempt hope
itself, even better than genies.
Gold pilots alight on all three branches
of the oyamel fir tree.
Through the pane
of over-state-
meant, building on
trapped distraught monarchs.
What beautiful wallpaper
for the border wall.
A path to freedom
wraps around the paper’s
weave. Apatheia comes
from below and above.
Negligence of the peat and the plant:
the pattern repeats
when caretakers are sent
to protect, but renege.
Royals leap
and are put to sleep en masse.
Is mass migration
an exigence or assassination?
What nation has walls
when the light is swallowed by night?
We have no need for your leave
to leave. Caped
crusaders
winging, winning out,
we’re flying over
the wall.
Lepidoptera
all asprawl.

STELLA WONG is a poet with degrees from Harvard and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Wong’s poems have appeared in Colorado Review, the LA Review of Books, Narrative, and Poetry. She is the author of the chapbook American Zero (Two Sylvias Press, 2018) and the collection Spooks (Saturnalia Books, 2022).