A Wonderful Visit with a Poet Friend in the New Year, and Then, Grappling with the ICE Murder of a Poet and an Unhinged President

A Wonderful Visit with a Poet Friend in the New Year

This post may seem a little bit unbalanced, but I have to describe the good times as well as the bad this week. Let me start with the birthday celebration with my good friend poet Kelli Agodon, in which we had a lot of laughs, some cupcakes, some libations, and some good talk about poetry. I had been feeling a bit discouraged on the poetry front, and Kelli is always good at helping me see the bigger picture on that front.

Glenn and Kelli’s husband Rose helped the festive mood, and Charlotte the literary kitten came out to be admired. Kelli’s new book is about to come out in a few months, and I am really looking forward to seeing it in real life!

It is no little thing to get together with friends and celebrate life’s joys. Human being’s capacity for joy is just as important as our capacity for grief and empathy—part of what makes being human worthwhile. After she left, I wrote my first poem of the new year and sent my book out to another publisher.

Grappling with the ICE Murder of a Poet, and an Unhinged President Grabbing Other Countries…

It is impossible to keep my blog apolitical these days. And why try? Not to quote Harry Potter, but as Minerva McGonagal said in The Deathly Hallows, “…his name is Voldemort, Filius. You might as well use it; he’s going to try and kill you either way.” There’s no point in trying to be nice, to not speak up in public, because at this point, they will try and kill us either way, and they proved it this week, murdering a young mother and award-winning poet, Renee Good, in cold blood by shooting her in the face when she was no threat, then lying about it and saying she was a ‘domestic terrorist.’ This evening, they were breaking into people’s houses in Minneapolis, where I have many friends, without warrants, brandishing guns in front of children. If anyone is the terrorist at this point, it is the Gestapo-like ICE agents, who seem to face no consequences, unlike our military and police force, for murder. We’ll see if the murderer is brought to justice. There is plenty of video evidence to show that the woman was no terrorist, though propogandists would have you believe otherwise, and the ice agent videotaping his encounter and when she says “I’m not mad at you” he growls “fucking bitch” as he shoots her three times in the head, with her wife and dog in the car. A white, innocent, American citizen—not a criminal, not an “illegal immigrant” but a local, mother of three, Christian housewife. None of those privileges protects us anymore from Trump’s evil personal secret enforcers. There were so many on the internet claiming Renee deserved to be murdered because she would not comply, but let me remind you, there were many that died in the hands of the Nazis, too for refusing to comply. I will be with the Resistance, in case you were wondering. I have a magnet on my fridge that says, “If I had to pick one word to best describe myself, I suppose it would have to be: Can’t. Follow. Orders.”

We must act to protect our country’s freedoms, or we must leave. It feels very much like the history books, reading about Berlin and Vienna in the 1930s. I remember reading about friends sneaking Jewish Dr. Freud out, and I remember asking myself why he didn’t leave sooner—but now I see, leaving isn’t easy, and a lot of people want to stay and fight to make their country a better place—though I am feeling unsure that that is even possible at this point. The United States, by the way, turned down Anne Frank’s application to come here to escape the Nazis, thereby causing her death in the concentration camps. Plus ca change…

With Trump kidnapping Venezuela’s President and First Lady, installing a puppet President and taking over the country’s oil, and now threatening our NATO ally Denmark by threatening to use military force to take Greenland, well, it sure does look like Hitler’s playbook, doesn’t it? And we know from history that appeasing bullies and dictators—as people and countries did in the 30’s—did not protect them. Not being willing to speak the evil’s name does not protect us.

These are serious times, and serious topics. It is easy to feel frightened and helpless and angry, all at once. I am a poet, and so, as we witness these moments, we will write poetry, maybe no one will read it, but we will write it all the same.

Here is my poem, “In Which I Declare My Resistance,’ published previously in Rise Up Review.