Nina Pop, 28, Sikeston, MO, May 3
We marked safe; we on the safe board.
	
Saturday, May 2, the day before you were stabbed multiple times 
at home, you wrote: 
        nt nothing like getting up jamming and deep 
cleaning yo house on a Saturday morning! My house is spotless anyway 
but ant nothing like a Saturday morning deep clean that’s a whole vibe.

Last days of stay home, you were ready to get out, clean house or no.

Sunday night, your joy spilled onto New Madrid Street, phone video on,
eyelashes, and that cropped Baddest Babe hoodie. 
                                               Watching your face,
hearing your voice for 15 minutes 32 seconds, just hanging out, looking for your cousin,
Ellery, you come through clearly, 
     	                                 Missouri drawl, the way you drank 
from that tall Styrofoam cup and straw, your face lit by car lights.

You said I’m not going in that open space. Keeping safe in the celebration.

What happened next, only you and he know, 
and neither of you is speaking. 

                               It took 3 weeks, but know that they got him, Nina. 

He pled not guilty, despite the crime scene being against him. 
   
It’s not much solace, I guess, but they had help; 
many called to give information. 
It was a hate crime, Nina, no doubt in their minds.
 
.

Helle Jae O’Regan, 20, San Antonio, TX, May 6

I love myself now. Thank you to everyone who’s ever supported me and to anyone who hasn’t I 
hope you come around. 


Damion Campbell came around, but not to love her.

The barbershop closed for quarantine since March,
she and the crew inside were cleaning when he tried 
the lock. They let him in. May 6, two days 
before reopening, three past her birthday.

He asked for an appointment, gave his real name 
and phone number. Went out to get his backpack
in order to pay, and came back with a gun and knife. 
He said, 

           God sent me to kill you for doing something wrong.
           What have you done wrong? What have you done wrong? 
           God sent me here to kill you because you have done something wrong! 
           What have you done wrong?

He didn’t want money, or the computer. He put 
Helle in a choke hold and when she lost consciousness, 
stabbed her prone body multiple times.

He killed Helle as God’s instrument of death
though there’s nothing to indicate hate.



.

 
Jayne Thompson, 33, Mesa County, CO, May 9, 2020: Misgendered for a Month
“Since she came out, life was very different,” Leopardi said. “Everything changed. A lot of 
things started weighing on her mentally.”



Being a cis-gender male, she said, was easy,
then, transitioning, people didn’t trust her as much.
Her children’s mother didn’t accept her change.
At the bar in Bisbee, Arizona, tourists were rude,
men would bump into her hoping for a fight. 

No one knows what she was doing in Orchard Mesa
that day. Clearly, she was lost. Standing by the road
for over an hour with a stick across her arms
like a mannequin. She just stood there, doing nothing
illegal. But someone called 911 anyway. Worried, maybe.
    
Clearly, she was troubled. To the officer’s questions,
she was unresponsive, then aggressive, wielding a knife.

The cop who shot her took her for a man with a shaggy beard. 
He said she lunged with the knife, so he shot her.
Multiple times, it turns out, even after she was down.
It was a month before they corrected her gender and name.

Jayne. 

Her co-worker Liz said she doesn’t even know
where she’s buried. She said: 

           Every night when I would 
           drop her off at home, she would say, 
           ‘Goodnight, I love you, Liz.’ 
           That would be the last thing 
           we would say to each other.



.




Dominique “Rem'mie” Fells, Philadelphia, PA, June 8
To be successful, take care of my mother, and have an impact.


These were her three wishes as told to the man 
with the video camera that day on the street
in Kensington. Also: just know the next time 
you all see me I’m going to be somebody
not just on YouTube, on television.

She took the sidewalk with a sashay, showing off  
in short shorts and shearling boots those long legs.

Rem’mie was just always having a good time 
and laughing. We have a lot of family get togethers, 
she loved being around her cousins, uncles and aunts. 
She likes to eat and have a good time.

Her mother said: Tolerance and acceptance 
should be a natural, common way of life.  

The evening of June 8, Rem’mie’s body
was pulled from the Schuylkill River 
with trauma to the head and face, stab wounds—
which by some kind of grace—is what killed her
before both legs were severed at the thigh.

           Who does that?

They’re looking for the man, an acquaintance,
in whose home they found a cutting tool, and blood.

There were 27 trans women killed last year.
Halfway through this one it’s nearly the same.

At her funeral, which spilled out into the street, 
the minister said: We're fighting against racism, 
classism, homophobia . . . Hate running rampant. 
Black lives matter. LGBT Black lives matter too.

Her sister said: I have never felt more pain 
than choosing the casket 
that’s my sister's final resting place. 
Every day I wake up and I see her face.

.
 
Riah Milton, 25, Liberty Twp, OH, June 9
Ohio does not have a hate crime statute that includes sexual orientation or gender identity.


Riah, your picture captivated me. Full figured, 
long lashed, shapely brows, and bow mouth,
your soft face framed by hair in twists worn long 
down your back, a beautiful woman. 

They say that two teenagers used the Internet
to lure you to a park to steal your car. What 
did they promise? When you got there, you 
understood. The boy, 18, shot you and accidentally
himself. The girl is fourteen, the juvenile lover 
of a 25-year-old man they’re still seeking.

On the map, Liberty Township is a swanky swath 
of lawns, and parks dotted with McMansions, 
and creeks thick with trees. They sought you, Riah,
you who just wanted to be accepted, and lured you 
to that place of green to kill you and steal your car. 

Asked if you were targeted because you were trans 
the Ohio police said: 

           This person was lured there 
           to be robbed and to have his car . . . 
           his belongings taken.
 
.

Michelle “Michellyn” Ramos Vargas, 33, San Germán, Puerto Rico, September 30 
She had been shot several times in the head. Police are investigating whether her killing may 
have been a hate crime, but they are not ruling out any possibility. 


The prosecutor said that there were three bullet casings
at the scene of the crime, an isolated roadside, near a farm, 
that corresponded to three wounds to the face. 

She was studying nursing. She was a bartender. 
She was calm and reserved and talked to her mother,
who mourns the crime of those three bullet casings.

Her hair was honey colored, shoulder length, and curled 
away from her face. Her hair was dark brown and pulled back
in pictures before those three wounds to her face. 

There were three casings, three wounds. Her face
in photographs is both beautiful and serene. Undamaged.
The prosecutor said that there were three bullet casings.

They are violating us, hunting us, they are murdering us 
while Wanda Vázquez and her government chooses to look away
from the three fatal wounds to Michellyn’s face.

She was two years short of the average trans life span.
She was the sixth to die in Puerto Rico, the thirtieth in the US.
The prosecutor said that there were three bullet casings
that corresponded to three wounds to the face. 

Subhaga Crystal Bacon (she/they) is a Queer poet living in rural Washington on unceded Methow land. She is the author of four collections of poetry including Surrender of Water in Hidden Places, Red Flag Poetry, 2022, and the Isabella Gardner Award winning Transitory, forthcoming in the fall from BOA Editions.