Jane Rosenberg LaForge
Summer 2025 | Poetry
In the City of Birds
I thought only of titles, beginnings
of ideas that would not flower, as if
a religion which cannot find followers,
or seeds that prefer to rot in water
rather than surrender their coats
to a sequence of events that lead
to summer. In summer, the carapaces
come off in favor of push-up bras
and shorts harvested from childhood
trousers. Look at those Americans,
I overheard a foreigner say once,
in their sneakers and Dungarees
as if they were forever teenagers,
although the truth is that it’s now
a European look for rare occasions
when the sun is unafraid to flaunt
its ecumenical customs. In my hiking
boots, my layers for rain and winter
conditions, I finally thought of a
metaphor for one of my father’s
less publicized disappointments,
the one that required him to navigate
through three aerial dimensions, like
a trinity of movement. I could see it
in how the hometown hero recognized
only in banishment urged us to watch
birds, to distinguish between those that
lift effortlessly into the sky on thermals,
from those audacious creatures of wax
and hubris.
Jane Rosenberg LaForge is the author of a memoir, two novels, four full-length poetry collections, and four chapbooks of poetry. Her fifth collection, The Exhaust of Dreams Adulterated, will be published in fall 2025 by Broadstone Books. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best of the Small Fictions. She lives in New York.