LINES

by Diane Vogel Ferri

People lined up in their cars at a food distribution site in San Antonio, Tex., in April 2020.Credit...Credit: William Luther/The San Antonio Express-News, via Associated Press and The New York Times.

My wall calendar helps me to visualize

my life, the plans I hold dear, the people

I must see so they also see me

At first the lines were through the

scribbling on my calendar,  an oddity,

disappointing at most—a temporary month

Sometimes there were two lines,

an X-ing out, a permanent loss

I catalogued the failures in my journal

Then the lines were of standing humans

waiting to vote, car-lines of hungry children

waiting for the food school had denied them

lines circling the parking lots for tests,

lines at the border, lines at the shelters,

lines at the unemployment office,

lines in the streets to confront the wizard 

behind the curtain, asking when we will be normal? 

But he was a fraud, a canceler of science, of truth

Freedom was not taken by a government

freedom was not taken at all, only

innocent lives, their coffins in orderly lines

The lines are now for a miracle,

for we who are left, whose lives have not

been crossed out, who are free to live.

Diane Vogel Ferri is a teacher, poet, and writer living in Solon, Ohio. Her newest novel is No Life But This: A Novel of Emily Warren Roebling. Her essays have been published in Scene Magazine, Raven’s Perch, Yellow Arrow Journal, and Good Works Review among others. Her poems can be found in numerous journals such as Wend Poetry, Her Words, Rubbertop Review, and Poet Lore. Her previous publications are Liquid Rubies (poetry), The Volume of Our Incongruity (poetry), The Desire Path (novel).

JANUARY SIXTH

by Diane Vogel Ferri

The Jan. 6 rally of Trump supporters before the assault on the Capitol.Credit: Nina Berman/NOOR/Redux via The New York Times.

Let us not forget 

how we heard the crack of the breach

in every state, the unholy war

with bloated flags waving

dishonorably, whipping

in the felonious wind

Let us not forget

the terrorism of groupthink

the righteous pounding and shattering

the victims in their glory

holding blue-line banners

while violating blue lives

Let us not forget 

what we saw in real-time

the slurs we heard

the trashing of Jesus

of our tax dollars

our house a crime scene

Let us not forget

the present disremembering

of the big lie

how it is in the past now

consequences suffered only

by the dead

Diane Vogel Ferri is a teacher, poet, and writer living in Solon, Ohio. Her essays have been published in Scene Magazine, Cleveland Stories, Yellow Arrow Journal, and Good Works Review among others. Her poems can be found in numerous journals such as Plainsongs, Rubbertop Review, and Poet Lore. Her previous publications are Liquid Rubies (poetry), The Volume of Our Incongruity (poetry), The Desire Path (novel) and her newest novel No Life But This: A Novel of Emily Warren Roebling.

TAMIR

by Diane Vogel Ferri

Every time an unarmed black man
falls to our videoed fears and white failures

I see Tamir’s face, so many times, too many times,
the face that I saw in my classroom one year.

Yes he was tall, yes he liked attention,
neither are reasons to be given two seconds

to respond to an adult, neither are reasons
to be on a list of martyrs to America’s shame,

neither are reasons for his twelve year-old
face to be frozen in time on tv, the news,

on the never-ending list of lost black men,
not a reason to be famous or dead.


Author’s Note: Tamir Rice was my student in 2012.

Diane Vogel Ferri is a teacher, poet, and writer living in Solon, Ohio. Her essays have been published in Scene Magazine, Cleveland Stories, Cleveland Christmas Memories, and Good Works Review among others. Her poems can be found in numerous journals such as Plainsongs, Rubbertop Review, and Poet Lore. Her previous publications include Liquid Rubies (poetry), The Volume of Our Incongruity (poetry), and The Desire Path (novel). A former special education teacher, she holds an M.Ed from Cleveland State University and is a founding member of Literary Cleveland.