Vi Khi Nao is the author of many books and is known for her work spanning poetry, fiction, play, film, and interdisciplinary collaborations. Her forthcoming novel, The Italian Letters, is scheduled for publication by Melville House in 2024. In the same year, she will release a co-authored manuscript titled, The Six Tones of Water, with Sun Yung Shin, through Ricochet. Recognized as a former Black Mountain Institute fellow, Vi received the Jim Duggins, PhD Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize in 2022.

Daisuke Shen is the author of the forthcoming short story collection Vague Predictions & Prophecies (2024), and the novella Funeral (with Vi Khi Nao, 2023). They live in New York City.

from A MOUTH HOLDS MANY THINGS:

“Funeral” [excerpt]

It’s hard to freeze anything in Hell, but both Xing and Eddie find Hell fairly accommodating. Hell has a better hospitality culture than heaven. In heaven, everyone must wear boring face masks (with words on them, words such as: “Silence is a great source of constipation”), drink almond milk, pre-register for Celestial Eventbrite, and leave their sandals by the half-quasi-bamboo, half-copper gate before entering. In heaven, no one can freely move about.

Everyone is restricted to designated areas: those who tried bánh mì before they sinned, and those who haven’t. In Hell, bánh mì is popular because its baguette-shaped physique, like a mini-cedar colorseque sarcophagus, can easily be toasted in Hell’s natural ultrawarm climate.

Later, Xing introduces Eddie to Cathy Park Hong, who was named on the 2021 TIME 100 list for her writings and espousal of Asian American women. After the brief, desultory introduction, Eddie looks at her intensely and cries for like fourteen years straight. Xing doesn’t know how to respond to Eddie’s lachrymose condition. Her tears aren’t entirely tears, just as the sky, raining tapioca, isn’t entirely tapioca. Eddie’s tears have the texture of translucent mung beans or bánh bao, which contains onion (no wonder she cries so much), mushroom, pork, salt, and egg.

Instead, Xing mumbles softly, “Eddie! Eddie! Why don’t you try eating edible, underwear-shaped packaged tofu to calm yourself down!”

Artist Reflection

Vi wanted to watch a queer Asian film, but was limited in her Criterionness in Boulder. Daisuke was trying to trans-characterize the ethos of queerasianness. And, it was Fall and the leaves were turning yellow and red and time was imminent and Daisuke wrote their sections while gazing out at the two unused barbeque grills outside of their window in Brooklyn. Eventually, Daisuke gave Vi access to the Criterion landscape through the-beast-must-be-killed password, which led them to watching Funeral Parade of Roses. Vi commented on the exquisiteness of the main character Eddie’s non-gendered buttcheeks and the book came together within a short period of approximately three months? Their intention was to write the continuation of Eddie’s life while preserving the nakedness of the dried tofu after it wore really sexy Chinese underwear.  Eventually, they ended up writing the continuation of many peoples’ lives, including Tony Leung. They both wrote when their car’s literary headlights were mostly turned off, and the view of the nocturnal landscape of the narration was ambushed with intermittent darkness. They were compelled by the unknown, not only of the materiality of the language but also the materiality of its direction. There was a lot of trust. Vi trusted that Daisuke would take them to a literary place that had not been explored, and they would not leave Vi in the mountains without any beef jerky, jackfruit chips, or coconut water. Due to the intensity of the process’ unknownness, Daisuke and Vi’s book unfolded organically without boxing gloves or TESticuLAr wheels. Its hybridity was born from biomorphing the quotidian exchanges between Vi and Daisuke, and ecologicizing the texture of their existence into the manuscript so that both worlds (fiction and poetry / photography and numbers) did not feel isolated or cannibalized in their contemporary diction and medium.