Fag Hammadi
by Max Brumberg-Kraus
Isaiah sang of vineyards, wild and overgrown.
Pausing for effect, he took a fist of grapes, and pressed
real hard. “When you further knowledge, you further sorrow”
muttered a harrowed Ecclesiast,
eyeing the singer from across the bar, the queen he’d chased
for years hoping to hold those red-stained hands.
I lay my tongue in wrinkled thighs— I, Isaiah, taste
that bitter fruit, while my chickenhawk plants
kisses—gullet quivering— on my barely-a-man’s
chest, wrist... fingers. Thus they signed a pact, abandoned
us and burnt their books. We’ve tried to breach that expanse
of forgotten wisdom, but we fail—children
midwifed with Jarman’s Blue in 1994.
A generation died when we were born.
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