Poetry: parfait by Stella Wong
This is a poem that viscerally delights in its own language, even while acknowledging “the nomenclature is so / clunky.” In flashes of sensation, moments loaded with flavor and texture, the speaker flits in and out through the communication of desire.
parfait
I want to propose a hike
and also propose mostly
because you help me dig cavities
in the custard cream
with the same spoon
in the time of plague.
in the hot pink brambleberry
crisp, the frigid dulce
de leche
and the fresh sky
blue lemon
and blueberry
perfection. glück calls it
the life-threatening forest.
I’m relative to the rough barked
arctic rasp
berry. brain-
jammed, there’s no name
but waldesrauschen, like
the whispering trees.
the nomenclature is so
clunky. it will have to do.
Stella Wong
Stella Wong is a poet with degrees from Harvard and the Iowa Writer's Workshop. Wong's poems have appeared in Poetry, Colorado Review, Bennington Review, Narrative, Poetry Northwest, and the LA Review of Books. She is the author of AMERICAN ZERO (Two Sylvias Press, 2018) and SPOOKS (Saturnalia Books, 2022).
