The Parakeets of Brooklyn/Parrocchetti Di Brooklyn

LaFemina's book is the Bordighera Poetry Prize #6, first published in 2005. "What draws me to Gerry LaFemina's poems is how much of the world they contain: Brooklyn streets, race-tracks, Vietnam, a boy's imagined transgressions, family dramas. What is compelling is the tension between the speaker's urge to understand and they mystery that resists explanation - the partial understandings, the misunderstandings of childhood.... listen to how these poems search as they attempt to tease out meaning.[...] LaFemina's poems ripple with erotic desire, the budding sexuality of young boys, the lure of the nape hidden under a woman's hair, the interiority of the boy who'd slid into the sleeve of the dark suit left by his father.[...] It's a gritty and tender gamble." Donna Masini (Bordighera Poetry Prize judge)