2025.124

Every time I go to Paris, I inevitably find myself sitting on the Seine, imagining myself an editor at the Three Mountains Press—as if I were Pound or Hemingway. I imagine myself living there. Learning French. Spending my days writing and writing and writing in a cramped but cozy apartment. Far from the States. America all but a memory. I indulge myself in this fantasy for the length of a cigarette.

While I've been gone, Minneapolis has been seized by ICE, a modern equivalent to slave patrols. Watching this from France, seeing it through a European lens, has really driven home the fact that history is repeating itself. That America has never paid for its past sins. It makes it easy to imagine what happens next.

And I would be remiss, as a poet, if I didn't call out the death of Renee Good. And not only the death of Renee, but also of Keith Porter and every one else who has died in ICE custody.

I've long been one of those people who's been "overreacting" for years—that is, I feel like I saw all this coming. My personal trauma is that I've been watching the Evangelical Christian church for the last 47 years, reaching for power, knowing their sermons, understanding what they really believe, which is nothing like the teachings of Jesus. Jesus is only a mascot to them.

Life is not sacred to Christians. Dave Barnhart, a pastor once wrote on Facebook:

"The unborn" are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don't resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don't ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they don't need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don't bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn. It's almost as if, by being born, they have died to you. You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus but actually dislike people who breathe.

Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn.

So when people die, when people are treated like animals, when people are beaten and shot and killed, it's because they deserve it. Because they didn't submit to authority. I grew up in a household like this. Every time my father hit me, I was reminded that it was my fault. That it hurt him more than me (lmfao). And you can see this same rhetoric play out in the news. Renee "deserved it". ICE is never in the wrong. Police are never in the wrong. If you get arrested or beat or murdered, it's your fault.