Phoenix by Jane Rosenberg LaForge

Phoenix Reborn by Iron Phoenix

.

Phoenix

.

If I had to choose the circumstances of my birth,
the mother of all do-overs
it would be alone, slick and silent

and I would shine on an empty stage

numinous like livestock:

But of which variety?

Which animal is without sin?

Meat on the hoof

or at the breast,

horns as vestigial anatomy

like the human pineal gland

or an appendix.

Which species denies pleasure

to its executioners

before the profits come rolling in?

After the capillaries are broken,

the rest is choice

about sentience and organs.

I would like to be more than my body

more than the limitations of my skin ;

and certain angles, slopes, ratios

of costume medals: never the good stuff

the markets trade in.

They say touch is nothing to us,

nothing to me

and yet I rub my hide

along a fence collapsing

from a surfeit of rain

and too little maintenance

until the follicles are breached,

ripped free of their burden

and I am another layer,

fresh and naked.

In the moonlight I will bray

at other possibilities,

Other systems,

and wait as patiently as I might

for my next set of parents. 

 .

Jane Rosenberg LaForge’s poetry collections are With Apologies to Mick Jagger, Other Gods, and All Women (Aldrich Press 2012); the forthcoming Daphne and Her Discontents (Ravenna Press); and four chapbooks. Her forthcoming novel is The Hawkman: A Fairy Tale of the Great War (Amberjack Publishing) and her memoir is An Unsuitable Princess: A True Fantasy, A Fantastical Memoir (Jaded Ibis Press 2014).