Stella Wong, a finalist in Narrative’s Tenth Annual Poetry Contest, is the author of the debut poetry collection Spooks (Saturnalia, 2022) and the chapbook American Zero. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she lives in New York City.

Pineapple

by Stella Wong

Lucy Liu, don’t worry,
I remember you
from the movie
Chicago, where
Richard Gere said
your mother owned all
the pineapples
of Hawaii, because
of course
with a surname of Baxter
you’d be an American
Kitty, bastardized roots
for this yellow fruit.
You’d be the most far-out
almost foreign
villain/villanelle, sweet
heart of America. I wonder
if, in addition to kneeing
two guys, you felt something break
your mother’s heart, captured
in your sights
the faces of the men and women of
America, cheating on
the imperiled overrich.

People on couch
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