We can't stop witnessing, writing, and telling the truth.

Renee Good refused to let herself become numb. We must do the same.

I can’t stop crying about Renee Good, the Minneapolis woman whom ICE murdered in cold blood, in broad daylight.

She was a queer woman, like me, and a poet, which means she shared with all of us writers this raw, exposed hyper-empathy, a compassion that sometimes makes it hard to function as well as an instinct to capture it in words.

Reports say that her family had recently moved to Minneapolis and didn’t know many people yet, but when ICE invaded her block, she took to the streets in support of her neighbors as a trained legal observer. That’s bravery, grace, unconditional love. Everything we aspire to in our writing.

You can read “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs”, an award-winning poem she published in 2020, here. The whole thing is stunning; here are the final lines:

now i can’t believe—

that the bible and qur’an and bhagavad gita are sliding long hairs behind my ear like mom

used to & exhaling from their mouths “make room for wonder”—

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

life is merely

to ovum and sperm

and where those two meet

and how often and how well

and what dies there.

Writing demands laying down your weapons and going into a vulnerable place. But just getting through the day right now requires an almost inhuman amount of dissociation.

While I work on my lil’ Substack, ICE is inflicting violence on citizens and asylum seekers alike. As I was chugging away on Book 6, ICE shot my friend Leigh Kunkel, a journalist, in the face and the back of the head with pepper balls while she reported on a peaceful Chicago protest.

Leigh was the first to crystallize for me that ICE agents are itching to inflict violence on others, especially people of color and “the libs.” That’s why they signed up. An army of Kyle Rittenhouses that answers to no one. We should not be surprised. Yesterday’s murder was horrifying but predictable.

If it wasn’t clear enough that “bully the libs” was a top priority for them, ICE used images of Leigh’s nonviolent partner in a recruitment ad just a week later:

Outraged? Dejected? Nauseous? Me too.

We have to compartmentalize to get through the day. It’s forced callousness, compulsory insensitivity. (And to be clear, I am not in any way suggesting I’m the real victim here. While I’m exceedingly privileged and largely shielded, my heart breaks for everyone subject to cruelty, systemic or specific. Which is nothing new, but closer to the surface—more in-our-faces than anytime I can recall.)

And so I’m trying to feel, to let that grief come hissing out like air in a leaking pool floatie, in controlled situations. My partner bought a punching bag for the garage; tears flooded my eyes as I slammed my fists into it again and again and again. Releasing my hips seems to open a portal to the pain, too; hip-opening yoga classes as well as therapy balls over my low back and glutes all squeeze out the tears like juice from an orange.

Back in Fall 2024, I wrote about how authors have the responsibility—and privilege!—of challenging the status quo and championing what’s right with their writing. We get to help people imagine a better world:

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When Trump won a few months later, I wrote about how writing is absolutely a form of fighting. Like Renee Good, you feel called to write. When the time is right, you can let the anger and horror snatch you by the wrist and lead you to the point you must—must—get across:

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And, in case it helps, last year I tried to make some light of the absurd position we self-promoting Authors Brands find ourselves in:

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I’m sending love and care to you, to Good’s family (whose GoFundMe is here), and to everyone affected by this administration’s cruelty, greed, and power grabs.

Today, we cry.

Tomorrow, just like Renee Good did every time she started a new poem—we pick up our pens and fight.