IN THE TIME OF THE MAD KING

by Jane Rosenberg LaForge

We waited. For someone to save us—
A lawyer who emerged from an onslaught
of documents to find that smoking diamond
of indisputable scandal, the hot and hard
evidence fresh from the seismic forces
that will eventually implicate everyone
and pull the red edifice permanently
beneath the surface. We waited on 
a clutch of senators as if they were
blackbirds, screaming with thirst, as
the temperature rose and the dough 
hardened around their bellies and necks, 
their vision fit to burst. Perhaps there was
a philanthropist, a banker or some titan 
of industry who had yet to offend us, who 
could provide a sweeping indictment of
the king’s fiscal wardrobe and its hidden 
curses. We waited for anyone outfitted like
the Statue of Liberty of Kafka’s imagination, 
wielding not light toward our welcoming shore 
but a scimitar pointed toward the heavens. 
We waited for literature; for comedians, 
professionals and amateurs in puffy animal
get-ups; for a plague of insects and amphibians 
to get the job done before all other species were 
sent to their doom, along with millions of humans. 
We waited for science, geometric proofs, facts 
of all genres; for sources and methods, common
sense or history to catch up with the velocity of 
the carnage. Our children injected Botox 
to preserve their tight and inchoate faces 
because we had foreclosed on their youth 
and they were keeping their options open 
for a second childhood to be carried out free 
of the king’s aegis. We waited for creams 
and lotions, hair dye and bronzers, for their 
chemical processes to reach their malignant 
apexes. We waited for the madness to lift 
as if a curtain made of the lead
we had allowed to adulterate our paint and seep 
into our rivers; for bread and angels to nourish
the poor huddled among us, until the miracle
rebirth of women whom we had previously 
torched for failing to dispense with the king
without our assistance, as if their ashes 
and embers had always contained the directions 
but we couldn’t be bothered to read the labels. 
So we waited, and kept waiting, like mourners 
afraid to share their allegiances, until we could
blame only ourselves, instead of the victims.

Jane Rosenberg LaForge is the author of a memoir, two novels, five full-length collections of poetry, and four chapbooks of poetry. Her poem "Overheard at the Sphere in Las Vegas During Dead and Co.'s Spring Run 2025" appeared in the The New Verse News on May 23, 2025.  

OVERHEARD AT THE SPHERE IN LAS VEGAS DURING DEAD AND CO.’S SPRING RUN 2025

by Jane Rosenberg LaForge

AI-generated graphic by Shutterstock for The New Verse News.

Fascism will seem inevitable long after
it arrives, or perhaps it’s the waiting
for fascism that is inescapable; you  
anticipate the pristine, diamond-fast, 
inconvertible moment of its advent 
like it’s Jesus, beveled and prismatic,
a milestone through which we’ll channel
every event of your circumscribed life.
Where were you, your grandchildren 
will ask, when coffee began to taste
off, fruits rotted faster, the lustrous effects
of oysters were outlawed because the flesh 
offended the tongue of the great leader
with a nano-speck of sand as though he
possessed the sensitivity of a prince asleep
on a mattress supported on the backs 
of loyal constituents, or because of his
unnatural disgust for the aboriginal environment. 
What if we applied the same terminology 
for fascists that we reserve for drug addicts,
a population jonesing for an authoritative
figure who will lead them by the nose
to their next hit, rush, or fix, of being 
totally dominated? You should be open 
with your children about your past drug
use, but not your present prescriptions, 
nor your plan of ditching your citizenship
while you wait out fascism in a foreign
nation, surreptitiously monitoring a
short-wave radio you pieced together
from bits and bobs of old door posts, 
vacuum cleaners and military regalia. 
Someday we might look back at this
interregnum with a glazed fascination,
although there’s no guarantee it will pass,
considering we no longer have communal
experiences, only niche encounters shared
among an ever-tightening cadre of familiars, 
like certain therapies or twisting the knife 
once it’s sunk into the rose of the bone, 
the sound of incursion is ever more gratifying. 

Jane Rosenberg LaForge is the author of a memoir, two novels, four full-length collections of poetry, and four chapbooks of poetry. She lives in New York, yearns for her hometown of Los Angeles, and visits Las Vegas when Dead and Co. plays there.