Editor’s note: The following article and video are contributed opinion pieces, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions, poetry, and literary submissions on theGrio.
A Preemptive Eulogy for Assata Shakur
Crawl, Assata, crawl!
Under barbed wire ideologies.
Walk, Assata, walk, casually
Right past them,
Pressed hair, crisp suit, painted face, sunshades
So they don’t recognize you as you flee. Run, Assata run so they don’t catch you
As you Fly Assata, fly over them wishing you away
Fly as your messages go over their heads
Too high for them to grasp.
Row, Assata, row
In the river Styx, the river bone, the river stone, the river home, the river Nile.
Slow, Assata slowly over troubled waters.
Drown, Assata drown in the rivers wild where our ancestors bled.
M-I- crooked letter crooked letter. Crooks. Fishing us out of the river wild when we fled,
where we bled single footed.
Run on one foot if you have to
Get away from their fingers pointing.
Shot, Assata shoot like they claim you did.
Die Assata dead that’s what they think.
Sink in their river Styx then float to other shores
And we’ll sing as you Wade so they think
You went over their board.
Walk Assata Walk this way follow our ancestors to the ocean’s underground.
We’ll make them think you died
So they stop in their tracks, in their traps.
Love, Assata, love.
Fidel faithfully.
Did he love, Assata love you
As we do love you most
When you sing your own dirge.
Like him, like King. Like kin.
Swing Assata swing like a child in a tree
In the ring of a tire.
Tired Assata you must be.
So, lie Assata lay in the grave
We will make them think you dead
And you gone
Gone, done gone.
FRANCESCA MOMPLAISIR is the author of The Garden of Broken Things and My Mother’s House. Born in Haiti, she is a multi-lingual scholar and novelist writing in English and Kreyol. Dr. Momplaisir studied at Columbia University, the University of Oxford, and New York University, where she earned a doctorate in African and African diaspora literature. She is the recipient of a Fulbright fellowship to travel to Ghana to research the cultural retention of the transatlantic slave trade. Her debut novel was compared to Toni Morrison “at the height of her career” (Harper’s Bazaar) and made several best book lists including Elle and Vulture. She lives in the New York City metro area.
