ICE Killing on a Minneapolis Street

“When you’re murdering a mother on a Minneapolis street”
Somewhere a six-year-old
Waits at the door for a mother that will not return.
Shoes by the wall,
Backpack still zipped,
A grocery list tor Tuesday dinner.
Outside, the street keeps breathing
Like nothing happened.
Leaders ignoring video evidence.
Undeserved ICE reverence.
A Quixotic gospel once was sung
Beneath strange fruit trees
where Black bodies hung,
Swaying in a southern sleaze.
Ain’t no justice in the heated breeze.
I’m thinking about gaslighting liars,
Leaders stoking open fires.
I’m thinking about capitalism,
Trying to resist the urgency
To put things in categories;
Trying to resist the solitude
Of ginned-up attitudes;
Trying to resist emotions
That come from sheer devotion.
Mother in car shot by ICE
On a Minneapolis street,
Bullets speak, Trump turning on the heat.
Children ripped from beds at midnight,
Echoes of terror, history’s repeated script.
Masked agents creeping, dragging hope away,
Woman murdered in the dead of day.
Thinking about dictatorship,
Reliving fragmented relationships,
Accelerating repression,
Mashed-up depression;
Systemic racism,
AI deep-fake escapism;
Thoughtless denouncements,
Unhinged pronouncements,
Power lurching without rhyme or reason,
A dictator building treasonous border walls.
Somewhere a six-year-old
Still waits at the door
for a mother that will not return.
Shoes by the wall,
Backpack still zipped,
A grocery list tor Tuesday dinner.
Outside, the street keeps breathing
Like nothing happened.

This article was posted on Sunday, January 11th, 2026 at 8:00am and is filed under Poetry.