American Sonnet for Renee Nicole Good

 
I

Blood splattered on an airbag, three bullets
Crack the cold air, open the woman’s face
What the fuck did you do? Shameshameshameshame!
The car lurches off to the right, careens
Into a pole, the woman’s body hunched
Over the steering wheel airbag like a
Drowning victim on a life ring, floating
To oblivion, where blood splotches all
In the interior, soda, sippy
Cup console, everything a mom would need
To commandeer her child through everyday
Life, yet she now lies lifeless in all this
Red, in a miscarriage amniotic
Fluid of power having lost all sense.

II

Has America lost all sense? Never
Did make much sense, history’s ebb and flow,
This tug o’ war like a car moving to
The right as an ICE agent pulls the door
How another one, indignant, aims his
Gun through the open window an opens
Fire on the middle-aged mom trying
To get back home to her child, escape the
Cold steel and cold stares and the orders barked
And the pop-pop-pop hot steel to the head
What was the last thing she heard? What did she
Think last? Was it the shrieking sound of her
Child running to the door? —Mommie! Mommie!

III

.4 miles from where George Floyd lost his life
A cop’s knee on his neck, cutting his breath
This woman’s head cracked open in her car
In her Honda Pilot mom mobile van
Thirty-seven years of her spilling out
Into the car console onto the glove
Compartment filled with bright stuffed animals
Sticky and linty and loved like only
A child could love them now smeared in mama’s
Blood pouring out her head and face, slumped right
A physician offers assistance, but
When asked to check her pulse, I’m a doctor—
The armed and masked agent says, I don’t care!
Which is what the cops who killed George Floyd said.

IV

Has America lost all sense? MAGA
A fascist statement dressed in bad ideas
They will say, why didn’t she just comply?
Which is to say she has no rights, just cops!
But Renee Nicole Good knew her rights, she
Would not just comply at masked men aiming
Guns at her, she’d do what any person
Sane enough to listen to the rush of fear
Coursing through her blood, and haul ass and run,
Plus, she’s American and a poet—
Poets don’t just comply, our very
Existence is predicated upon
Righteous indignation and compassion
For a nation that many times, veers right.

V

And what is wrong with loving thy neighbor?
What is wrong with sticking up for someone?
For caring? For giving a shit about
The world, wanting to make a difference?
Put your shoulder to the wheel, challenge the
System, question authority, bring beauty
To life? Is this not what we should bequeath?
To lose one’s life so young is tragedy
To live a life big enough to love is
A magnificent thing, especially
In a country that seldom lives up to
Its mythology and will eat its young—
Renee Nicole Good leaves her child orphaned
Leaves behind her poetry, dreams, and love.

*

This Land

 
We will survive
The slaughter
We always do

No skin tight
Enough to strangle
Bones

No bread wicked
Enough to
Fly or shoo

Or take wing
Like bullet rounds
Some have feet

Of clay
Some whose eyelids
Stitched and weighted

With stolen coins
Some rather they
Zipper their mouths

Than share syllables
With truth
No land belongs

To any man
But this fig tree’s
Roots have my

Grandfather’s DNA
Each grain of sand
Wails in my

Grandmother’s throat
Gripped in prayer
We will survive

The slaughter
We always do
Our bones not too

Weak to beat
Incessantly
Insistently

Like the most
Ancient
Of hearts

Inshallah
Inshallah
Inshallah

***

(Read Renee Nicole Good’s own award winning poem here)