I kicked all the white
folk out Coachella
one year, passed out
tickets to the no-backpack
kids shouting Halle Berry
down crooked hallways
waiting for a hallelujah
on the other side,
so you know I don’t
mind telling a room full
of whites what I think—
especially if they trade
in power or got that
cake. Pile it high on this
conference table. I be
buried alive—hardly here
for your comfort. You’ll have
to get the donuts yourself,
boss—at least until another
one of us gets hired up
in this piece. I only run
my own errands, so I’m dropping
g’s on all my
gerunds from here
on out fam. We call
this wildin. Could you
imagine if I was serious?
Why can’t you imagine that
I’m serious? Is it cuz I be
lookin like you until I slap
on a name tag? Cuz I slide
in a finna sometimes just to see
where you at like how you finna
leave me here after all this? Ain’t I
the same who conjured this
smoke? Who learned you nice lyin
side by side in a field of amaranth as I slipped
my finger into your mouth—

Dujie Tahat is a Filipino-Jordanian immigrant living in Washington state. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in Sugar House Review, Nashville Review, The Southeast Review, Shenandoah, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, The American Journal of Poetry, and elsewhere. Dujie has earned fellowships from the Richard Hugo House and Jack Straw Writing Program, serves as a poetry editor for Moss and Homology Lit, and cohosts The Poet Salon podcast. He got his start as a Seattle Poetry Slam Finalist, a collegiate grand slam champion, and Seattle Youth Speaks Grand Slam Champion, representing Seattle at HBO’s Brave New Voices.