“Four Ribs Past” and Other Poems

By Conan Tan

Four Ribs Past

Lover, I thought I saw you by the pool the other night

I killed a boy. Bleached coral, bronze hair, his lips a cherry

bomb imploded in mine. Breath burnt sandalwood, that

musk of week-old whiskey jeans and all that is to say he smelled

like you, like the time we fucked and I had to stop myself

from swallowing your heart. To let it riot against my tongue

the way a pastor’s first sermon demands submission.

Submission as penance. Penance as a liturgy for the meat

we mangle in the dark. In every cathedral, a man is waiting

to be ruined. That means he’s disrobed. That means he’s God

freshly stoned. That means I bent him over to the shape

of your knees, our bodies flammable in the thick of sin.

We were both holster and virginial. God we were almost

mercurial. You in that ashblack cassock. So full of possibilities.

It was cold and I could have been more than just your

dirty little faggot. Your hit-and-run. God, how we loved almost

getting caught. You in that holding cell stench. You

with the knife slicing me open from neck to flood, from

boyhood to gun wound in the back of my father’s car.

Mount Faber. Every inch doused with touch. I took you in

heady, gaunt, no sense of the morning after. And you

whispered like we were soon to be wildfire, my girlfriend

can’t know about this. Cruel, isn’t it? How you held us

under covers, how you cracked my ribs open and demanded

more. When I was there in the water pushing him down

to be baptised, god he looked just like you. Blushing tip. Coarse

grey fists roped around the neck. I was the gunman

and you the grip and every boy after collateral bone.


If You Give Me A Minute

I would talk about the time they shot            three grown men

into space with            nothing on them            nothing but their suits

how it was the happiest            they’ve ever been or the time the floor

 

was lava and we were superheroes            our tragic origin story

how we spidered             from couch to table            hitched forty

soldiers to safety            and if we had another minute we could’ve kept

 

our siblings from burning            I would talk about the time you chopped

your hair off for kids            with cancer            kids that were a younger us

who would never grow up to be us            short kids like my brother short

 

changed of life            that night spite            gnawed vipered cloaked me

in ruin the single search for            what-ifs and what-nows            held together by

you gossamer blue            sheering feel from end as if            journeys exist without

 

collision            the torque of my fist            unballing into tug like teenage

yearning            like this was classroom theory            on why you should never

meet your heroes            because divergence            and transference are two

 

sides of the same coin            so if you give me a minute I would tell

you I need more than a minute            to list the ways            I needed you

from table to bed            from bed to body            because it was never the moon

 

the astronauts were grateful for            and I crashed into you with a

cratered heart            mistook love for love            when you were just a crash

course in astronomy            the moon orbits the earth            despite him knowing


Still Life

Perhaps it was the wind’s whispers,       the quiet

          growing quieter, all the branches     falling,

all the shadows         stirring blue.      Dragontoothed.

   When the ground beneath began to

                                                           gasp.          Tremble.

          Seedless.      Like the dark’s flecked

  wings.     Perhaps angrier, faster like a witness

           to wildfire.          In that crevasse of desire,

the moon necked to howl,           even the trees were out

for blood,           something twitching, beastly,

                human. The undergrowth       moving, its distant

       glint, perhaps a dare, certainly a death

       wish. And yet, there            by the bench,

                          that portrait of fir, fruit, foxglove

                 before wilt, a boy             looked over his shoulders

and said Perhaps we’re so beautiful

                         the world has to watch us bloom.


Conan Tan (he/they) is patiently awaiting the next Fiona Apple album that would absolutely wreck him. Their poems have been published in Blue Marble Review, Eunoia Review, Stone of Madness, and QLRS, among others. He was also the winner of the 2022 National Poetry Competition for his poem “Prodigal.”



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