Fan’s beautiful poem, published in AV 140.1, uses innovative language, themes and form to create a comparison between intimacy and the natural world. Fan is an (incredibly talented) regular in Toronto literary circles, and we’re so happy that his work has found a home in AV over the past few years.

Noon in the morning and for
breakfast you put all the scraps in your mouth.
It’s another way to wash with the wreck,
the night backhanding you against
unconvincing lust–to have been taken
by a boy like a series of drawers
emptied at dusk, like a lily at dawn
would bend to dew.

Your childhood was given to id, a hot brand burning
you limp but for a light from glass;
beachside, the tide would turn
oysters and cool stone upon volleys
of foam; your feet in play would touch to his
and behind your eyes the low long blow of the sublime
rose before you ever knew the word, or how to keep it alive.

Now your body is shucked against
an incorrect curvature of light.
flesh slab one half unformed and one
whole horizon of heaped sand,
waterweight, your angels abandoned you
in rounds to fly to tender pastures
as yet unmet
by thundering sin.

Bed on your back.
So the precision of your patience
wastes you to the hurried world.

Untitled

Visual by Mithila Rajavel