Caleb “The Negro Artist” Rainey crafted a fierce spoken-word poem from the collision of anger and love in his internal monologue in the days after the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis.
The poem, “Ode To The Immutable,” one of the more urgent, and unabashedly political, in Rainey’s collected works, is posted above in its entirety.
“Renee Good was more than decent,” Rainey says in the poem. “Her daughter described her as compassionate. Her wife would call her loving, forgiving and affectionate. Some would say she was simply splendiferous, but nonetheless this did not prevent the dastardly domino of death from falling on her. January 7, 2026, murder made another mother meet a man-made end.”
Rainey, an Iowa-Michigan artist, who performs under the name “The Negro Artist” — a nod to a Langston Hughes essay — performed the work at Coe College in Cedar Rapids Wednesday night. Rainey joined filmmaker Nik Heftman for a showing of the documentary “The Negro Artist,” and an evening of spoken-word poetry with fellow artist Kelsey Bigelow. The film chronicles Rainey’s life. Heftman has developed a film experience with poetry workshops, performances and a showing of “The Negro Artist, and other artistic forums, a collaborative and interactive event that has been featured around the nation.
It’s the first time I heard “Ode To The Immutable.” I scribbled the words “ferociously urgent” as I absorbed the performance at Coe College.
Rainey did not know Renee Good, who was also a poet, but they have mutual friends, he said.
“She’s always insisting they stop to notice,” Rainey said of Good, a mother. “She was a poet after all, the kind of person who was conscious of a comma out of place.”
In a question-and-answer session following the film on Rainey’s life, a forum I moderated, Rainey talked about the inspiration for the new poem.
“I have to imagine Renee’s life, right,” Rainey said. “There’s a narrative. There’s a human here. There’s a story there that needs to be held in honor.”
He wrote the poem in the weeks after Good was killed at the hands of federal officials.
“How easy it would be right now for me to be just angry, just angry — and righteously so. I can be righteously angry this week,” Rainey said in the forum. “And I went, ‘Ok, but if I am going to choose love in some way, how can I choose love and still honor the anger I have. I think both can live in the same room together. How do I do that?’”
“I want to honor the fact that this is not a new murder,” Rainey added. “This just happens to be a white lady this time. I’ve known this fight for a long time. We have known this fight for a long time, and we do keep moving, and we do keep fighting.”
(Douglas Burns, founder of The Iowa Mercury and a fourth-generation Iowa journalist from Carroll, is a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Read dozens of the most talented writers in Iowa in just one place. The Iowa Writers’ Collaborative spans the full state. It’s one of the biggest things going in Iowa journalism and writing now — and you don’t want to miss. This collaborative is — as the outstanding Quad Cities journalist Ed Tibbetts says — YOUR SUNDAY IOWA newspaper. )
About The Iowa Mercury
(Douglas Burns, founder of The Iowa Mercury and a fourth-generation Iowa journalist from Carroll, is a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Read dozens of the most talented writers in Iowa in just one place. The Iowa Writers’ Collaborative spans the full state. It’s one of the biggest things going in Iowa journalism and writing now — and you don’t want to miss. This collaborative is — as the outstanding Quad Cities journalist Ed Tibbetts says — YOUR SUNDAY IOWA newspaper. )
