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