Issue 1.1
Summer 2021
Vi Khi Nao
Sleep
Clocking in
159 hours of
overtime
in a month
averaging
5.3 hours of
excess work
each day on
8 hours worth
of daily labor
The laborer
Miwa Sado
is placing her
small nippon
head on the
train track
of Japanese
work culture
waiting for
the sleeper of
karōshi
to escort
her heart
failure to
Tokyo
where labor
laws have fallen
asleep
Not forced
at all to clock in
159 hours
of overtime
to slaughter
overtime
Not forced
to endure years
of chronic sleep
deprivation
Not forced
to jump out
of a building
Silence is diligent
Exhaustion is diligent
Death is diligent
Suicide is diligent
Not sleeping is diligent
What is the opposite
of diligence?
An eager
tongue that
would devastate
the following
demographic:
Slothful
raw tuna
taking a nap on
a bed of sushi rice
on a Friday afternoon
Sluggish
eels
taking forty winks
with wasabi & its
indolent workmate
soy sauce
Inactive
calamari
vegging out with
its unrelated
lethargic relatives:
cucumbers
& avocados
Premium Friday is
not Medium Monday
Premium is not
Premium
The last Friday of
the month for
unrequired leisure
is the equivalent
of asking
if two extra
rice seeds
would nourish
the human
body for
a year
Vi Khi Nao’s work includes poetry, fiction, film, play, and cross-genre collaboration. She is the author of the novel, Fish in Exile , the story collection A Brief Alphabet of Torture (winner of the 2016 FC2’s Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize) and of four poetry collections: Human Tetris, Sheep Machine, Umbilical Hospital, and The Old Philosopher (winner of the 2014 Nightboat Prize). Her poetry collection, A Bell Curve Is a Pregnant Straight Line, and her short stories collection, The Vegas Dilemma, are forthcoming from 11:11 Press summer and fall 2021 respectively. She was the Fall 2019 fellow at the Black Mountain Institute.
Vi's Book Recommendations
Ghost Of: Diana Khoi Nguyen
Instrument: Dao Strom
Savage Pageant: Jessica Q Stark
A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure: Hoa Nguyen
Soap for the Dogs: Stacey Tran