A poem for Friday and a Q&A with the poet/writer Vi Khi Nao
Fish Carcass
Vi Khi Nao
fish carcass
say hello to pork rind
+ arborio rice
while castaway caraway puree returns
home to deconstruct wilted carrot
from its butter + herb remnants
fish carcass
say goodbye to a knife fight
between under-marinated onion slice
+ wasted redbor kale
amidst a gun battle between
grilled salmon + paprika
fish carcass
say goodnight to electrolytes + magnesium
as a chemical imbalance takes
place inside the borderline cod meat
fish carcass
say good morning to anti-griddle + orange liqueur
whose pre-conditional love for salt + bitterness
reminiscent of caviar + pancetta vinaigrette
has put quail eggs
under the cloche
fish carcass
say midday to emu eggs while
the sun twirls
inside a decadent basket of
fish sauce without making
the plastic mattress, walk-in
refrigerator, + bacon sabayon
feel left out
fish carcass
say cloud nine
say egginess
say shell-shocked
say cornichon
say it angelo
say italian meringue
say calf liver
say republic of georgia
say lavash
say turnpike turnips
say succotash
say yuzu marmalade
say overcooked quail
say chef teah evans
say fish head
say into a barrel
say bacon fat
say baby corn
say flavor profile
say with victory
say the gods are with me
say no guts no glory
say did not materialize
say story on a plate
Source: Poetry (November 2016)
Vi Khi Nao's work includes poetry, fiction, film and cross-genre collaboration. She is the author of six poetry collections including A Brief Alphabet of Torture (winner of the 2016 FC2's Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize), her recent novel, Swimming with Dead Stars, published in February, and a collaborative work, That Woman Could Be You, with Jessica Alexander published in April from BlazeVOX.
She was the Fall 2019 fellow at the Black Mountain Institute: https://www.vikhinao.com
By Moriah Hampton, PhD, an instructor in the University at Albany's Program in Writing and Critical Inquiry (WCI). Her fiction, poetry, photography, and photopoetry have appeared or are forthcoming in The Coachella Review, The Ponder Review, Wordgathering, The Sonder Review, and elsewhere.
How is your latest novel, Swimming with Dead Stars, responding to prevailing notions of Vietnamese-American women’s writing?
It is thus a narrative of the Vietnam war in its everyday effects; of violent migration; and of the interlocking systemic injustices that undergird contemporary immigrant life in the United States.
The novel grew out of an awareness that the narratives surrounding the Vietnam war had coalesced into certain hollow standardizations; what for me has always been a texture of reality seemed to circulate in American discourse largely in the form of convenient cliché.
I intend this novel as a means of generating alternative sets of affects and concepts, a new rhetorical vocabulary, with which to grasp the twinned workings of postwar and health and mental health in a way only literature can.
What do you want the audience to remember while reading Swimming with Dead Stars?
You don’t have to try very hard: it’s easy to be alone, isolated, and desperate. As a friend once said, “I am just flower and clitoris. I am easily forgotten.” And, any health crisis bears resemblance to an alien abduction/accident or an intergalactic travel.
What do you hope the audience gains from reading Swimming with Dead Stars?
I hope they gain a new metaphysical heart. Or a physical one, if it’s possible. I hope they learn to love me a little more, to care for Vietnamese (American) women more, and to not turn to misogynistic men’s literature for inspiration or to give them (prestigious) awards for being misogynistic.
Do you consider Swimming with Dead Stars in conversation with any artworks? If so, which ones and how?
It’s in conversation with a film: Bela Tarr’s "Werckmeister Harmonies." It’s in the opening pages of Swimming with Dead Stars.
"Werckmeister Harmonies" is one of my favorite films of all time.
I watched it before my open heart surgery. And, since much of Swimming with Dead Stars deals with the pre-surgical realities (the operating theater) of a particular moment in a person's life, it seems fitting.
The opening scene of the film uses the human bodies to reference/symbolize/metaphorically or symbolically substitute for certain planetary planets. I too also applied celestial /intergalactic objects/destinations to build and also create characters to meet such cosmic proportions and consequences in my work.
What larger conversation do you want to have about Vietnamese-American women’s writing, art, and its reception?
Swimming with Dead Stars stands in conversation with previous collaborations that I have undertaken alongside She Who Has No Masters(s), a collective of Vietnamese-American writers and scholars grappling in different ways with questions of diaspora, collectivity, and immigrant subjectivity. Our collaborative work has included chapbooks, performance art, video, numerous literary translations into and out of Vietnamese, and more.
Links
She Who Has No Master(s), the Vietnamese diasporic arts organization Vi Khi Nao says influenced her novel: www.dvan.org/she-who-has-no-masters/