Illustration by Taylor Boydw
“The Emancipation of Araminta”
BY Kuong lam
khlam@vwc.edu
Liberty or death; I will have one or the other…
Life; a brutal harvest since the day I was born from my mother.
Today is the day, tonight will be the night
I trade in my heart, before he trades in me.
Loveless love, a wife for monetary.
Numb from ardor with God’s blood in my veins.
Emancipation is now the fight.
Brothers O’ Brothers!
Liberation!
There!
The other side!
Trust the cloudless sky and starry night
The North Star is our mighty light!
Through the river! Over the hill!
Our hands will no longer work cotton mills!
We mustn’t turn back, we’re covering ground.
Brothers O’ Brothers!
Trepidation has you turning around…
Seclusion.
Now my only hope
Is what is grasped in my hand; a tiny note
From a man
With the names of houses where I shall not be sold.
He said ‘there I shall ride the wagons,
Despite the rust, dust, and old.’
“Remember to remain silent
When you are aboard the Underground Railroad!”
My lungs are airless sacks,
Constrained to keep pumping until the wagon’s stop.
Retrieve air and risk my sanity -
Sanity mislaid when returned to slavery.
Set underneath a scalding cloth
With eyes longing to be free,
Araminta, a little girl born into servility
Is the one crying for liberty from within me.
Approaching the North
Thereupon a cloudy sky and starless night,
I was in the land where I could speak.
The land where I could earn money and eat.
The land of the free!
The land of the free!
The land of the free!
Yet my life is incomplete…
I am one,
And there is still so many.
My friends and family who live
Each day in despondency.
They await for me, for I,
Harriet Tubman will take Moses’
Prophecy.
Carry them across the enslavement sea
For the waves have parted.
Copyright © 2005 Marlin Chronicle | Optimized for Firefox at 1024x768.
Web Editors: Kim Cullen