assata rhymes with daughter

my hand on your hand

elbow in your elbow

who is frame who is shape

other hand softens in a tentative fist

elbow in your elbow

i refuse to eat anything

but macaroni and cheese

bloom tiny fist

small soft black power

i eat only macaroni and cheese

grow strong in the reflux of the beast

small soft black power

you want to tell me

a story about free

i grow strong

in the reflux of the beast

not the belly but close

you would teach me the nuance of a fist

that can relax

and hold

not umbilically connected

my hand on your hand

relax and hold this

soon you will tell me the story

she was framed

in the belly

but the fist

persist

soon you will teach me her name

My father was born in the state of New Jersey. He also died in the state of New Jersey. My father disagreed with the state of New Jersey on most important things. The first and lasting disagreement he taught me was about our beloved Assata. My father taught me to love Assata. She was our superhero. The definition of true power. The person we learned to love who we had never met. The person who inspires us to meet the freest parts of our living. We love Assata as a way to love ourselves.

My father wasn’t a Black Panther or an activist when he taught me this. In fact, he was an ivy leage trained corporate lawyer and at the time of this photograph about to be the first Black vice president of the oldest and most conservative investment bank in the country. Banks were the strategic targets of some of the work of the Black Liberation Army. And of course my father’s relationship to the bank was also strategic. He did it to feed us. Until he couldn’t (but that’s another story). My father believed that loving Assata was the most effective way to unlearn what capitalism taught him about himself, on a daily basis and through the periodic rough hands of the police. He found Assata’s life, her survival despite police violence, her dignity despite the entire apparatus of the state and the media leveled against her to be another possible story of Black life beyond Babylon. For my father, Assata’s victory was a source of healing of wounds within him he was still working to name. He believed that her name and her story should be celebrated and shared.

The state of New Jersey disagrees. They say to this day that Assata is a terrorist. She is on an official list with an official bounty on her head. The highway police of the State of New Jersey who showed my father he was their enemy when he was still a schoolboy, (guns drawn on that same highway at him and the other black boys on a field trip), are still angry that she survived their comprehensive attempts kill her. They are angry that we are still listening to her despite their ongoing attempts to defame her. They are angry that she is somewhere safe and free, because they don’t know where or what that really is. Safety. Freedom.

So they fear the part of us that loves Assata. The part of us that inspires love and protection. The part of us that finds poetry in prison. That makes new life in the face of attempted eradication. The part of us that outlives the lie. I am Clyde’s daughter. May the the part of me that loves Assata be water. May it be every part of me, may it flush out the fear the state insists on and turn it into faith. May I remember this example of Black love across wildly different experiences. May I honor the place where the underground revolutionary meets the 9 to 5 corporate lawyer. May I remember in times of division and contradiction that Black love does have the capacity to flow through everything and arrive to itself as itself whole.

P.S. My every day writing practice shapes my days into vessels for generations of love. If you want support with your own daily creative practice, I’d love to be part of your journey. Videos, poem prompts, meditations and more are here for you in the Stardust and Salt Daily Creative Practice Intensive. Click the link to learn more.