I have been looking into schedules. Even when we read physics, we inquire of each least particle, What then shall I do this morning? How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time.
~Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
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On the first of each month,
a guest writer
shares
how they spend the day.
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Gina and me October 2023 Octavia Books New Orleans
September 1, 2024: Gina Ferrara
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In the summer of 2019, the Newport Beach police used Twitter to tell the story of the 1973 disappearance and murder of eleven-year-old Linda Ann O’Keefe. Gina Ferrara saw a story about Linda, who would have been about her age had she lived, and felt as if she were looking back at her young self. She wrote a poem about Linda. Shortly thereafter, another story surfaced about two young girls missing in Iowa and then another one about a young woman missing in Kentucky. Gina became obsessed by the lives of these missing and murdered women and set out to write a poem about a lost life in each state. The result is her beautiful collection Amiss.
“You Know the Number,” Colorado, shows the power of concrete physical objects and how much meaning they can hold. We feel how long this woman has been missing as the telephone on which the narrator has been hoping she would call changes into newer and newer versions. At the beginning, there’s a “mustard yellow rotary” in the hallway alcove, then the “pink princess” bedside, the “onyx wall mounted,”
And now the cordless
displaying who called in red numbers,
the size of lacerations and small stiches.
In “Witness,” Oklahoma, it’s the accumulation of details that allows the reader to understand the story. The one witness cannot speak. Someone left him in the aisle near the cereal with the extras out of reach,
to wander that night in newly minted steps,
motherless.
“One July Day,” Alabama, has a breathless, relentless quality. The poem itself shows how fast it happens. We see it and hear it and it’s over.
One July Day (Alabama)
A sheath of dirt dulling the mesh
screen door slamming, nearly unhinged,
in time to see edges of the sun,
the final dark arc of it visible, ablaze,
when her ride arrived, windows open
passing the river, black,
black river water irreversible,
an indelible underscore, a shooting arrow
hitting a target, the plaintiff calls
could be heard, whip-poor-whills
and bob white quails
echoing, something rhetorical
in those notes, no answers to be given
on why she was leaving again,
her reasons horded in town after town.
Gina Ferrara lives and writes in New Orleans. According to a friend, Gina’s love of words began at age nine when her grandmother suggested she write to her uncle Andrew who was in Vietnam. In addition to Amiss (2023), Gina has published four other poetry collections: Ethereal Avalanche (2009), Amber Porch Light (2013), Fitting the Sixth Finger: Poems Inspired by the Paintings of Marc Chagall (2017) and Weight of the Ripened (2020), a finalist for the Eyelands Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and was selected for publication in the Sixty-Four Best Poets of 2019 by Black Mountain Press. Gina teaches English and writing at Delgado Community College and is the curator of The Poetry Buffet–if you’re in New Orleans check out this reading series, which takes place one Saturday a month at the New Orleans Public Library.
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Come back on SEPTEMBER 1st to read how GINA FERRARA spends her days.
