The Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity formed in Mexico in 2011, to create public spaces for people to share the grief and the pain about the escalation of violence attributed to the drug war and the war on drugs. Public poetry recitals or performances were crucial to these public meetings. This article takes theoretical approaches from the Global North to highlight the affinities and connections between the escalation of violence in Mexico, and the neoliberalizations of politics and thought on a global scale, and to learn from the Mexicans' strong resistance. The analysis focuses on three sets of poems: two that explore the connectivity between interiority and exteriority of emotional pain; the anonymous poem 'I'm not the son of a poet' which is analysed through Judith Butler's concept of precarious life, and through which I explore the critical limitations and potentials of frames and mirrors for a critical intervention; and María Rivera's 'The Dead', where motion and gesture, brought together with an analytical reflection on Hélène Cixous' writing on women speaking in public, build an alternative response to being transfixed in the face of horror and brutality. The article ends with a theorization of 'global listening spaces', building on Kate Lacey's use of the term in her book Listening Publics.