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issue 11: HOMECOMING

queer love story

ADAM GIANFORCARO
                  “[God] does not and cannot bless sin”
                  —Vatican decree from March 15, 2021

Bless us hellions with love
but not enough. I’m afraid
 
that story’s been told. Survival 
was our first matrimony.
 
You look to us with two eyes 
as two fists clenched
 
b/w the burning sun 
and your burning sons— 
 
O! Now here comes the choir,
discreet everymen with harps
 
and horns and yearnings, closing in
around our figures in flames:
 
prophets picnicking with gasoline.
Still, dogma dangles us from the balcony
 
like the King of Pop. Queer kids
spell trauma for every camera
 
they see. Anchors ask, What is it like
to kiss with the forked tongue of a sinner?
 
Like heaven, we say. Like a burning.

Adam Gianforcaro (he/him) lives in Wilmington, Delaware. His poems can be found in RHINO Poetry, Third Coast, the minnesota review, Rust + Moth, Poet Lore, and elsewhere. His poem “Overture” was also featured in the LOVERS issue of perhappened. He tweets intermittently under the handle @xadamg.
perhappened mag
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header photo: nina hill (unsplash)

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