Sing
​
by Ashley Monet Johnson

When the lights shut off and it’s my turn
To settle down, my main concern
Promise that you will sing about me…
—Kendrick Lamar, “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst”

My dad wants me to sing about him. Before I do, he gives me instructions. He tells me to read. Check out Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow and Carter G. Woodson’s The Mis-Education of the Negro. We go to the Museum of African-Americana. After I do my reading, he tells me a story. He never reaches the end…

Sing about the prison industrial complex and the plight of marginalized blacks. Don’t forget the hundred-to-one cocaine-to-crack ratio and mandatory minimums. Sing of black excellence.

​He thinks (I am not a statistic of justice). I see flesh on a scale, marked chattel. A system dehumanized my dad—intelligent black male.

~

He has never been known to sing—my father. His condition of addiction was incurable. He played a solo elegy inside a cell. His vibrato intensified in the hole. From debut to platinum status, the ideas for his song never change.

Strip. Squat. Cough. (Survive in here.)

Run that back. (Survive.)

Open wide. It is unacceptable to sing.

Tongue up—pressed to the roof of your mouth. Tongue down. Tongue out.

Put these on. Welcome home.

You sleep here. Stay in here.

​An inmate’s refrain sounds like: figure out who you are. Read. Keep your head down but walk proud. Keep your head up but stay humble.

~

The sentence repeats. Another is added, over and over, time and again. Again. (Run that back.) His soundtrack is distorted. Heat-warped the vinyl grooves until whole parts went missing. I try to concentrate on echoes of crooked crooning.

Holding parsed notes, I mumble through melody.

Revise words. Rehearse sounds.

I am ready to record his record (for the record), but—when I open my mouth—he stops me.

Once more he says. Repeat after me he says: I was at Howard University (The Black Mecca) in the ‘80s. I am worthy. I’m the color of the brown paper bag. I passed the test. I been to Howard Dental School. I had plans… a private practice. I know black-bourgeoise and black poverty.

I hear him, I have heard him. I can recite it from memory. It goes…

My daddy—a God-fearing, woman-loving, wanting-for-nothing, black middle-class-family-having, countryside-visiting, city-living, suburban-dwelling, black boy—became an addict. For a long time, he frequented buildings with bars and places with rehab in the name. But the buildings didn’t make him better.

An applause for my freestyle, my father is pleased.

I am not.

~

My pitch is off. I’ve been singing the same song, the same riff, but there’s something missing. The rhythm? Perhaps…

Maybe it’s me… (Maybe it’s my voice.)

Nah— His notes are wrong. He never finished telling me the story.

I ask him for the melody. Just hum. Cut the words, just hum. Vibrations. Pour soul in it. Give me a reference track.

(I will get it together, and then I will sing.)

​He gives me what I ask for, but it is more than one song. My dad’s untitled magnum opus, unmastered:

I study the track listing and check the time stamps. I’m thirty-three-years old. I had my daddy for four-and-a-half years (fifty-one months). My father spent 127 months in centers, facilities, and complexes, for correction and detention. Detained for 127 months, nothing was corrected.

Our bids together were not consecutive or concurrent. My location was a pit stop on his road tour from this jail, to that prison, and some rehab. I waited on him doing time.

I want to sing it right. I prayed to God—on my hands and knees, like Grandma showed me. But prayers are not wishes and God is not a djinni.

(I think) I liked him more when he was locked up than when he huffed and puffed crack. He made the clearest sounds when he was clean—at home (not running). Every relapse and scrape happened when he was outside of a container. I feared for him when he was free; I feared for him when he was incarcerated. The worrying turned me into a parent long before I birthed my first son.

Though I am too old for parenting now, I am never too old for his advice. For a long time, we’ve been in the round. Taking turns. Trading tracks.

When our metronomes click clack in unison (when we’re synced up) we chop it up.

I refuse to pen lyrics until his timing aligns with my beat.

These songs already exist, have existed, will continue to exist. There are many covers and renditions—for my father’s version, I know the notes and I can sing.

I can revise; try a different pitch. Go an octave higher.

​My dad just can’t add no more tracks.

---

Ashley Monet Johnson lives in Silver Spring, Maryland. She is an M.F.A. candidate at the Solstice M.F.A. Creative Writing Program of Pine Manor College. Her work has appeared in Sleet Magazine.

A 2020 Pushcart Prize nominee, Ashley's poem can be found in Issue 21 of Glassworks.