RENEE GOOD

Renee Good, 26 seconds before the ICE agent shot her dead. Photograph Jonathan Ross – Alpha News, Public Domain

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R.I.P. | 1988-2026

by Sudeep Sen

RENEE GOOD

R.I.P. | 1988-2026

Minus one-degree centigrade

   in the Himalayan Almora tonight —

ICE predicted it would frost over. 

   I sit bundled in five layers of wool,

yet I do not feel its inherent warmth.

   Faraway in Minneapolis, a lawless

shroud, a blood-stained cerement.

   Poets, citizens with conscience 

on my social feeds —

   rain messages of a poet’s death.

Shot point-blank— federal-agent’s

   twisted dark idea of self-defence —

state-licensed serial murders

   on a spooling loop. A mile away,

George Floyd’s death site,

   Chauvin’s heartless asphyxiation —

a tragedy begetting another crime.

   Good’s last words, “I’m not mad

at you,” her earnest premonition.

  “Fuck you, bitch!” Ross shoots, kills.

We protest helplessly, horrified,

   handcuffed — Sten-stunned, numb.

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Sudeep Sen [www.sudeepsen.org] is Professor of Practice, Dept of English & Cultural Studies, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India; Visiting Associate, Centre for Indian Studies in Africa (CISA), University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, and Co-Chair, Asia-Pacific Writers & Translators (APWT), Australia. Formerly, he was Visiting Scholar at Harvard University, USA.

     He is a leading international poet whose prize-winning books include: Postmarked India: New & Selected Poems (HarperCollins), Aria (A K Ramanujan Translation Award), Fractals: New & Selected Poems | Translations 1980-2015 (London Magazine Editions), EroText (Penguin), Kaifi Azmi: Poems | Nazms (Bloomsbury),  Anthropocene (Pippa Rann, Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize). Red and Rock completes ‘The Eco Trilogy’. Edited landmark anthologies include: The HarperCollins Book of English Poetry, Modern English Poetry by Younger Indians (Sahitya Akademi), and Converse: Contemporary English Poetry by Indians (Pippa Rann). Blue Nude: Ekphrasis & New Poems (Jorge Zalamea International Poetry Prize), Bhutan, Rock, and The Whispering Anklets are forthcoming.

     His photography represented by ArtMbassy, Rome/Berlin [http://www.artmbassy.com/artists.html], is part of private/public collections. The Government of India awarded him the senior fellowship for “outstanding persons in the field of culture/literature.” Sen is the first Asian honoured to deliver the Derek Walcott Lecture and read at the Nobel Laureate Festival. Sen is also the International & Poetry Editor at Ars Notoria Magazine.