“The message in the so-sick-it muse ic is all on the cover, O’Jays style. The bills are pressing but this book (a We) can help you (Now!) gain a stamp of heritage, your own postal traveling shoes, in the office of International (if not Domestic) Acceptance especially if the real tradition, a mature Langston Hughes in a hat, frames your introduction.”
—Boston Review

“Hand feels Simone’s life as if she herself is living it; as if Simone’s ghosts have leapt into her—and she makes artful poems as their hearts beat in her own body.”
—The Mom Egg

“Hand varies the form and voices in her poems deftly into a contemporary blues that speaks to a woman’s creative challenges within the streams of family that flows in unpredictable rhythms.”
—On the Seawall

“…like ‘two souls in a duet.'”
—Library Journal

“When a poem is good, I feel it in my body…a commotion in my pit…this is a collection of commotion.”
—Yes, Poetry

“Monica A. Hand’s me and Nina is a beautiful book by a soul survivor. In these poems she sings deep songs of violated intimacy and the hard work of repair. The poems are unsentimental, blood-red, and positively true, note for note, like the singing of Nina Simone herself. Hand has written a moving, deeply satisfying, and unforgettable book.”
—Elizabeth Alexander

“In me and Nina Monica A. Hand depicts, as Nina Simone did, what it is to be gifted and Black in America. She shifts dynamically through voices and forms homemade, received and re-imagined to conjure the music (and Muses) of art and experience. This is a debut fiercely illuminated by declaration and song.”
—Terrance Hayes

“Monica A. Hand sings us a crushed velvet requiem of Nina Simone. She plumbs Nina’s mysterious bluesline while recounting the scars of her own overcoming. Hand joins the chorus of shouters like Patricia Smith and Wanda Coleman in this searchlight of a book, bearing her voice like a torch for all we’ve gained and lost in the heat of good song.”
―Tyehimba Jess

Contents
Sound speaks 3
Regret and Pride speak 7
The Need to Be Touched speaks 8
Colored 9
Everything Must Change 11
Daddy Bop 13
The Curtis Institute speaks 15
Upward Bound 16
Mrs. Massinovitch 17
My grand baby says she is a princess 18
Zuihitsu on the Lover Who It Might as Well Be Spring 19
Black People Sure Can Keep Secrets 21
Snuff 22
dear Nina 23
Eunice Waymon 24
dear Nina 25
Freedom speaks 27
Some Sign of Nature 29
dear Nina 30
Sonnets for Unrequited Love 32
dear Nina 35
Confessions of John Divine Waymon 36
Alone, Naturally 37
Me
Nina Looks Inside 41
Libation 49
X is for Xenophobia 50
Bach Fugue speaks 51
Resistance 52
The grand baby asks if I’m happy 53
From the Language of Ash 54
Black is Beautiful 55
Daughters 56
Things That Stink 57
My grand baby says she’s sad 58
The Spirituals speak 59
This morning she flies from room to room 60
How it Feels to be Free 61
A Red Box For 63
Patches of Black Snow 64
The Gray Sky speaks 65
Worry Beads 66
Jim Crow 67
Alma Thomas speaks with Nina and Lorraine 69
Movement for Three 70
dear Nina 71
Strong Man 72
dear Nina 74
Fodder in the Wings 76
So I’m Gonna Leave You the Blues 77
Bandog (Chained Dog) speaks 78