{"id":19464,"date":"2025-04-04T22:58:41","date_gmt":"2025-04-05T03:58:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/?p=19464"},"modified":"2025-04-10T01:22:08","modified_gmt":"2025-04-10T06:22:08","slug":"blue-foreskin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/archives\/19464","title":{"rendered":"BLUE FORESKIN"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n

Wolfberries then, and the wood ears<\/span><\/span>
bobbing like little buoys along your<\/span><\/span>
tongue. The bruised fruits tempting<\/span><\/span>
you. Open sesame. The scene unfolds<\/span><\/span>
like a cold open from a cancelled<\/span><\/span>
soap opera. Baby teeth tumbling out<\/span><\/span>
laundried, lost cause from keeping<\/span><\/span>
time, and your mother upright as a<\/span><\/span>
veteran ginkgo, scooping the white<\/span><\/span>
back into your bowl. These scraps<\/span><\/span>
of love shoved down your bomb<\/span><\/span>
sheltered throat. This rice<\/span>–<\/span>ripened<\/span><\/span>
steam rising past you like ghosts<\/span><\/span>
through walls. Years. How efficient<\/span><\/span>
it must be to live and never be seen.<\/span><\/span>
The God your mother believes in<\/span><\/span>
floats on your spoon like a voyeur<\/span><\/span>
or belly<\/span>–<\/span>up corpse searching for<\/span><\/span>
a faucet to leak from. Odd, how<\/span><\/span>
absence announces its entrance<\/span><\/span>
with the brute force of dead ends.<\/span><\/span>
Once, your mother drove into the<\/span><\/span>
mausoleum of God and found you<\/span><\/span>
with a boyfriend knee deep in burnt<\/span><\/span>
glory, the light refracting as a knife<\/span><\/span>
twist. The violent kiss like an expert<\/span><\/span>
diver accelerating towards the water.<\/span><\/span>
Blue foreskin, blind faith. The kind<\/span><\/span>
you need to place candles inside paper<\/span><\/span>
lanterns. To watch them pass from<\/span><\/span>
this life into the next. Tiny miracles<\/span><\/span>
of ash. You pause for a later ending.<\/span><\/span>
Ladle the pork wontons from the<\/span><\/span>
pot and into your mouth. Into your<\/span><\/span>
mother heavy as proof. Her chopsticks<\/span><\/span>
flat across the bowl\u2019s rim. Laid out like<\/span><\/span>
white flags. The way oars float even<\/span><\/span>
after everything else has sunk. Because<\/span><\/span>
funerals are really for the living. Because<\/span><\/span>
love, she says, is bright failure, and your<\/span><\/span>
heart was never the lotus but the ocean<\/span><\/span>
compromised by light. When God<\/span><\/span>
moved in through the flickering water<\/span><\/span>
over the promise of years. Like a slow<\/span><\/span>
cooked soup. How your mother moves<\/span><\/span>
in slow motion now. Without a compass<\/span><\/span>
or hourglass, distance becomes a home.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
<\/div>\n
\n
Conan Tan<\/a><\/h6>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wolfberries then, and the wood earsbobbing like little buoys along yourtongue. The bruised fruits temptingyou. Open sesame. The scene unfoldslike a cold open from a cancelledsoap opera. Baby teeth tumbling outlaundried, lost cause from keepingtime, and your mother upright as aveteran ginkgo, scooping the whiteback into your bowl. These scrapsof love shoved down your bombsheltered […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2317,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[83,1],"tags":[25],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Jypy-53W","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19464"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2317"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19464"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19464\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19466,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19464\/revisions\/19466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}