Renee Nicole Good remembered as a prize-winning poet — here’s the award-winning poem she wrote

Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old poet and mother, was killed during a confrontation with ICE agents in Minneapolis. She lived just a few blocks from where the shooting occurred. Witness accounts and video describe a tense encounter with federal officers. As details continue to emerge, attention has turned to who Good was beyond the moment of her death.

Known for her award-winning writing, she received the Academy of American Poets Prize in 2020. Her poem, “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs,” now stands as part of her legacy, as per a report by the Literary Hub.



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What happened in Minneapolis today?

Renee Nicole Good was killed earlier today during a confrontation involving ICE agents in south Minneapolis, not far from her home. According to the Minnesota Star Tribune, an ICE agent “shot and killed a woman in south Minneapolis during a morning confrontation between community members and federal officers.”

Witnesses said agents were ordering Good out of her vehicle. Video footage showed officers surrounding the car as it reversed and then moved forward. “One agent appeared to fire multiple rounds into the car,” the report stated. The incident unfolded in broad daylight and was seen by residents in the area, as per a report by the Literary Hub.

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Who was Renee Nicole Good beyond the headlines?

Good was 37 years old and the mother of a six-year-old boy. Her now-private Instagram bio described her as a “Poet and writer and wife and mom and shitty guitar strummer from Colorado; experiencing Minneapolis, MN.” Friends and readers knew her first through her words rather than through tragedy.

In 2020, writing under the name Renée Nicole Macklin, she won the Academy of American Poets Prize. The award recognized her poem “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs,” a piece that blends memory, science, faith, and doubt with striking intimacy and precision.

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Here’s the award-winning poem she wrote

In the wake of her death, readers have returned to the poem that brought her national recognition. The work opens quietly and personally, drawing readers into a world shaped by learning and loss. The poem is taken from the Literary Hub.

On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs
by Renée Nicole Macklin

i want back my rocking chairs,

solipsist sunsets,

& coastal jungle sounds that are tercets from cicadas and pentameter from the hairy legs of cockroaches.

i’ve donated bibles to thrift stores

(mashed them in plastic trash bags with an acidic himalayan salt lamp—

the post-baptism bibles, the ones plucked from street corners from the meaty hands of zealots, the dumbed-down, easy-to-read, parasitic kind):

remember more the slick rubber smell of high gloss biology textbook pictures; they burned the hairs inside my nostrils,

& salt & ink that rubbed off on my palms.

under clippings of the moon at two forty five AM I study&repeat

ribosome

endoplasmic—

lactic acid

stamen

at the IHOP on the corner of powers and stetson hills—


i repeated & scribbled until it picked its way & stagnated somewhere i can’t point to anymore, maybe my gut—
maybe there in-between my pancreas & large intestine is the piddly brook of my soul.

it’s the ruler by which i reduce all things now; hard-edged & splintering from knowledge that used to sit, a cloth against fevered forehead.

can i let them both be? this fickle faith and this college science that heckles from the back of the classroom


now i can’t believe—

that the bible and qur’an and bhagavad gita are sliding long hairs behind my ear like mom used to & exhaling from their mouths “make room for wonder”—

all my understanding dribbles down the chin onto the chest & is summarized as:

life is merely

to ovum and sperm

and where those two meet

and how often and how well

and what dies there.


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FAQs

Who was Renee Nicole Good?
She was a prize-winning poet, writer, and mother living in Minneapolis.

What poem is she known for?
She won the Academy of American Poets Prize for “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs.”