Renee Nicole Good, girl killed by ICE in Minnesota, was a poet

Good received an award for her poem ‘On Studying to Dissect Fetal Pigs’

MANILA, Philippines – Renee Nicole Good, who was shot and killed by a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent on January 7, was an award-winning poet.

Good obtained her Artistic Writing diploma from the Outdated Dominion College in Norfolk, Virginia. In 2020, as a scholar, she received an undergraduate poetry prize from the college’s English division for her piece, “On Studying to Dissect Fetal Pigs.”

The poem sees the mom of three dive deep into existential inquiry, life, and loss of life. Again then, judges for the competitors had praised Good for her use of images and for having the ability to seamlessly weave in an unlimited vary of recollections to get her level throughout.

“What’s the origin story of ‘need;’ the urgency of perception and nonbelief? the primary line the poet asks. By way of specificity of picture and associative leaps from piece to piece emerges a textual content that in itself turns into a sacred textual content, a meditation that leads the reader into the unknown,” the judges wrote about her piece.

Under is Good’s poem, initially revealed below poets.org:

On Studying to Dissect Fetal Pigs

by Renée Nicole Macklin

i need again my rocking chairs,

solipsist sunsets,

& coastal jungle sounds which can be tercets from cicadas and pentameter from the furry legs of cockroaches.

i’ve donated bibles to thrift shops

(mashed them in plastic trash baggage with an acidic himalayan salt lamp—

the post-baptism bibles, those plucked from avenue corners from the meaty fingers of zealots, the dumbed-down, easy-to-read, parasitic variety):

keep in mind extra the slick rubber scent of excessive gloss biology textbook photos; they burned the hairs inside my nostrils,

& salt & ink that rubbed off on my palms.

below clippings of the moon at two 45 AM I research&repeat

               ribosome

               endoplasmic—

               lactic acid

               stamen

on the IHOP on the nook of powers and stetson hills—

i repeated & scribbled till it picked its manner & stagnated someplace i can’t level to anymore, possibly my intestine—

possibly there in-between my pancreas & giant gut is the piddly brook of my soul.

it’s the ruler by which i scale back all issues now; hard-edged & splintering from information that used to take a seat, a material towards fevered brow.

am i able to allow them to each be? this fickle religion and this faculty science that heckles from the again of the classroom

               now i can’t consider—

               that the bible and qur’an and bhagavad gita are sliding lengthy hairs behind my ear like mother used to & exhaling from their mouths “make room for marvel”—

all my understanding dribbles down the chin onto the chest & is summarized as:

life is merely

to ovum and sperm

and the place these two meet

and the way usually and the way properly

and what dies there.

Good was killed just some blocks away from the place she was dwelling together with her accomplice within the Twin Cities. She was shot by an ICE agent whereas inside her SUV.

She leaves behind her accomplice and three children: a 15-year-old daughter, a 12-year-old son, and a six-year-old. She was beforehand married to Timmy Ray Macklin Jr., who died in 2023 at 36 years previous. – Rappler.com