Tag: Jane Rosenberg LaForge

What Crosses

By Jane Rosenberg LaForge

Teeth and rosaries:
the hard business of taking
a census, in this case
one of erasure, pound
for pound of marrow
and pith, the appropriation
of bone for bracelets,
tree bark for embracing
new belief systems.
Everything funneled into
flat equations, which should
come out even, if
the arithmetic is properly
executed. If not, we’ll just
have extra, and affect some

disappearances, Gaps
in history, with regularity
that goes into record-keeping
overseas, the circumstances
always desperate, now
with the watermarks and seals.
Wax is such weak material,
corruptible as religion.
Unlike the bottom facts
memorized or pinned
on the inside of jackets,
who was made criminal
by which accident, who
could not be ground down
into a spice or artifact,
or mortared into an atmosphere
of sacrifice and myths
hollowed out or smoothed
over as if a faux decoration
in a kitchen: where
the stories begin,
if migration ever ends.

 

Jane Rosenberg LaForge is the granddaughter of what are now called “illegal immigrants” who came to the US from the Ukraine and Rumania, via Canada. Her poem “Thoughts and Prayers” appeared on Writers Resist on February 22, 2018. She is also a novelist and memoirist. More information, visit jane-rosenberg-laforge.com.

Photo by Malcolm Lightbody on Unsplash.

Thoughts & Prayers

By Jane Rosenberg LaForge

 

They are offered in rote
as if the supply is bottomless;
like abstractions, inaction
and aesthetics; they could
be meaningless or mean
anything, so long as they
are not so sustaining as
steak & lobster for the
impoverished; more like
succotash & wilted lettuce.

Maybe they’re a law firm
the kind advertised on television
with a jingle and 1-800 number
children can’t help learning
before their alphabet; so much so
they’ve become a part of the literacy process!
A tentative, baby step toward
discerning cliché from idiom
because language: it’s a young
person’s business now, if they can
survive being a soft target.

Or perhaps it’s becoming part
of the international ergot, like a traffic sign
or the symbol for “no,” or a name
we give to conglomerates selling
mattresses or men’s clothing:
instant recognition for the product
and everyone knows just where to go
to find the best discounts.

For this year, I was thinking
they might make a particularly
poignant salutation for the season,
what with the war on Christmas
always burgeoning, so coming to you
on a greeting card soon, from a raft
of similar partnerships: O.F. Mossberg
& Sons, Heckler & Koch,
and Clint Eastwood’s truly evergreen
friends, Smith & Wesson.

Or they might be best employed
as a broadcast sign-off;
not so much like Walter Cronkite’s
“& that’s the way it is,” if he were
working on a Wednesday, the 14th of February, 2018;
but as his successor attempted
for five days no one remembers
except for the derision and embarrassment:
“Courage,” was all he said
as if looking into the future,
because we’re going to need a lot more of it.

 

Jane Rosenberg LaForge is the author of Daphne and Her Discontents, a full-length collection of poems from Ravenna Press; and the forthcoming novel, The Hawkman: A Fairy Tale of the Great War, from Amberjack Publishing. For more information, visit jane-rosenberg-laforge.com. and follow her on Twitter, @JaneRLaForge.

Image credit: An anonymous internet find.