The Hearing

Suzanne Morris

June 30, 2022

—-for Fran Levy

Who would have noticed

such a small detail

given the gravity of

the proceedings?

Not when the witness from Georgia

said she had been

robbed of her name– 

the affectionate name

known throughout her community

for many years– 

robbed of her identity by

those who would rob us all 

of the votes we cast in the

2020 Presidential election,

those who also had

accused her of nonexistent crimes

hounded her from her home and

threatened her with violence

those who seemed to regard her

as mere collateral damage

in their treacherous scheme.

No, not then, but right at the end

of the day’s proceedings:

who would have noticed

such a small detail,

when the Jewish gentleman

from California

took time in his

closing statement to

pause and smile at her

with tenderness

then restore her 

beloved name?

Lady Ruby, he said,

speaking her name intimately

yet for the whole world to hear,

in a gesture of respect

and gratitude

for all she had done

for her country,

and for the price

she had paid.

For forty years, Suzanne Morris was a novelist, with eight published works beginning with Galveston (Doubleday, 1976) and most recently Aftermath - a novel of the New London school tragedy, 1937 (SFASU Press, 2016). Often her poetry was attributed to characters in her fiction. Nowadays she devotes all her creative energies to writing poems. Her work is included in the anthologies, No Season for Silence - Texas Poets and Pandemic (Kallisto GAIA Press, 2020), and the upcoming, Gone, but Not Forgotten, from Stone Poetry Journal. Her poems have also appeared in The New Verse News.