ABBEY (LINCOLN) TELLS ALL
Didn’t know nothing about no singing not how songs supposed to be sung like the way when you can catch a feeling and soar to glory and back on a sound
all I did was stand up there warbling just like I heard it on the radio showing all the good lord gave me marilyn in sepia is what they wanted
then one night I heard Monk whisper ivories percussing in my ear communicating with my spirit don’t be so perfect. that’s what he said
ain’t no wrong beats in the music you got to swing the whole damn band when Monk speaks you ought to listen he’s as likely to dance as to say a word
don’t try. cause you can’t stop my screaming WE INSIST! that’s all I’m saying hardly perfect. hard to handle warrior woman. nappy Abbey
what’s my body got to do with the music don’t send me no more evening gowns straight ahead is where I’m going straight ahead is where I’m going.
Bernadine (Dine) Watson is a nonfiction writer and poet who lives in Washington, D.C. She has written on social policy issues for major foundations, nonprofit organizations and for the Washington Post Health and Science section and She the People blog. Dine’s memoir: Transplant won the 2023 Washington Writers’ Publishing House prize for nonfiction and appeared on National Public Radio’s 2023 list of Books We Love. Dine was selected by Poets & Writers as one of their “5 over 50” debut authors for 2023. Her poetry has been published in Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Bourgeon/Mid-Atlantic Review and Sanctuary, published by Darkhouse Books. In 2023, two of her poems were nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Dine is a member of the 2015 class of the DC Commission on Arts and Humanities Poet in Progress Program and the 2017 and 2018 classes of the Hurston Wright Foundation’s Summer Writers’ Workshop for Poetry.