Conan Tan
Image by Xi Xi from Pexels
Conan Tan (he/they) is a young queer Singaporean Chinese writer. Their poems have been published or are forthcoming in Rattle, Beaver, HAD, Blue Marble Review, SUSPECT, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, and elsewhere. Their debut poetry manuscript-in-progress on queer love, trauma, and healing was a finalist for Sing Lit Station's 2023 Poetry Manuscript Bootcamp. The winner of Singapore's 2022 National Poetry Competition, he is matriculating at Oxford University this fall. Find them on Instagram and Twitter @tmyconan.
Adam and Steve
In another life I would fuck you like Zeus would doggy style
palm a fish spear out of knotgrass phalanx the narrative hook
of twin flame bodies digging and raptor bodies caught outside
deer-faced in headlights ready for the kill bodies extinct bodies
limb-locked and caged desire I plunge into the body’s nadir
the fluid motion in waveform mirror I mistake your name
for Poseidon god of water In another life we’re alive
and southbound for a landing I map the west coast shoreline
on your chest the summer never-ending the summer leafless
belonging bubbling bursting bladder the sandscape is a beached
whale rudder and keel the nerve the mortar and pestle
the body’s naval gaze and ship’s stern short for sternum short of
this land would be perfect for civilization
We could build a resort out of our hands
slam our histories into the waves like thunder waves of grief
Let’s raise our children to be more than grief
In another life we compress our grief
into heat press the marrow between our toes
I feel the knotgrass phalanx the night salting your
skin I pull twist shovel bone out of me
and name it sacrifice meaning love meaning touch philosophy
meaning more myth than person in the right boy’s mouth
meaning yours I take the night’s blue balls and scum and swallow
I plant my spine next to yours let it spore in the soil meaning kink
meaning baptism and I garden I tender a kiss to you
flushed red our bodies never-ending somehow we land
on each other and all this desire from way up there
even God would see the snakebite the apple the current the carpal
the doe-eyed wonder of two boys fresh out of the womb leafless in sin
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