Praise for American Zero

Stella Wong wields the kind of weaponry I live to be slayed by. Funny as hell, delightfully strange and full of a sneaky and giant heart, American Zero is holds its beloved subjects – friends, siblings, Lucy Liu, grapefruits, all the jesuses the poet can muster – and gives them body with wicked imagination and knock-out tenderness. This book will knock the windows of your heart not just open, but out the frame once you see how far Wong can dive into fear and the terrible possibles of humanness can still carry back something like hope, gooder than joy. Wong has crafted a brief, but mighty collection of poems that point towards the bright possibly of power to make us better dreamers, better lovers, better homies, and oh my jesuses how thankful I am for this abundant offering. I’m sure you will be too.   --Danez Smith (Contest Judge)
 
If poetry were a biathlon, Stella Wong would take the gold. She's a solid skier and a crack shot, each poem a bullet hitting its mark. Thank God she's turned all of this energy and accuracy into poetry. 'Where do you put your body of color' she asks. Then proceeds to school everyone. Stella Wong is a force, a maker, a master.  --D.A. Powell
 
Bookended by dramatic appeals to Lucy Liu and America itself, another name for Stella Wong’s exciting, candid, incantatory American Zero might be “American Presence,” for Wong’s is a crisp new voice intently, intensely, undeniably zeroing in, and it’s certainly not for nothing that the important last word of the important last poem is “here.”  --Robyn Schiff
 
You and Stella Wong are the last two people on Earth. You’re going to witness her “ride in/to hell” and you will need to prepare yourself for the moment when she decides to use her “daddy voice” on Jesus. You’re the last two people on Earth because the truth—the truth of Stella Wong’s voice, the truth of these poems—has scared away the timid. But be strong. The apocalypse of American Zero is scary and dangerous, yes, but it’s also a lot of fun. --Josh Bell
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Sample Poem:

​Halloween
 
 
We do not buy
into crystals, poker
 
chips or other forms of bread
and circuses. We made ourselves up
 
in the mirror laced with rosary
and Mardi Gras beads, stranded
 
without the definition of fairy
lights, refusing to name ourselves
nympho, klepto, pyro.
 
We cannot afford the goose, cold
and blue & snow-white,
 
preferring to take it straight
from the mouth
 
of the next-door come-as-eurotrash party,
smoking the birthday boy out
of his self-imported cigarettes.
 
This is what I believe in:
my roommate’s prayer-soft blanket
 
pleated in turquoise & other
shades of please. I believe we hail
 
voodoo utilized on ritualistic break-up,
one of us peeing on a pillow while
the other one pretends we cannot hear.
 
Let us pretend we are descended
from witches, have everything yet                       
 
to be maimed, too hot & too irregular to
live. I’ll be your misshapen & your
 
mishaps will be mine, so scarce
and precious to be beloved. I see you,
 
hallowed queen folding sheets               
some color other than white.