“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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