Vi Khi Nao is the author of the novel, Fish in Exile, and the poetry collection, The Old Philosopher. Vi’s work includes poetry, fiction, film and cross-genre collaboration. She was the winner of the 2014 Nightboat Poetry Prize and the 2016 Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Contest.
A SMALL FIRE
Infinity drifts out of your soul
Like snow while
You are sitting in front of a fire
Trying to blow out the
Wind in your chest
A small fire which leaves
Tears running out of my body
Rain runs after pavement, you say
The meters of the night
Drill holes into
My spleen, says the earth
What if love is not
Petrified wood
of yesterday?
Would you marry the day
With the Night?
HOW OFTEN
How often we sacrifice
our dormant will for the sake
Of beauty when beauty
wasn’t worth it & neither is sexiness?
How often we borrow the
Bone structure of our beloved & find that
It had gone off to war, to die, to sin
The forgotten breeze?
How often we refuse
To inhale yesterday’s breath
Because it has a stain
The color of ennui?
How often we climb into time’s
Broken lap to discover
Skin + bone have dissolved
Into a flask of vinegar + baking soda?
How often the shadow evokes
Shame when the wolves inside
All of us wish to find restraint
From our teeth?
How often we choose our foes
Over our friends because we
Sincerely believe that being
Slapped is significantly more
Superior than being kissed?
How often we turn our shoulders
Away from what is empty to watch
Later in disbelief at
The overflowing phantom
Breasts of our regrets?
How often the night washes
Our hair with the black oil of
The moon’s pale engine of light?
CHILDBIRTH
When the bus drives home the
sun is swimming behind
the trees
I missed the bus while trying
To text
Even the earth knows
It can’t clothe itself
On pure ecstasy
Even yesterday Autumn forgets
Her own childbirth
My entire wardrobe is made
Out of sin
Even God knows it’s hard to
Give birth to
Baby manic depression
It’s hard to distinguish
What lives behind you
+What lives inside of you
Yesterday the trees have
Been tortured
By a gang of wet clouds
And the snowbank dreams
Of flattening the
Mosquitos
Photo credit: Stephen Olsen