I’m problematic, I’m toxic,
I appropriate white culture,
I rock sneakers ’til they talk,
I wear flip flops in October.
When it’s 50 degrees out,
I’m four, five seconds from
catching a coochie cold
all cuz I’m getting drunk
just to trick my body
to believe it’s warm.
It’s that nordic shit.
Somewhere, deep down,
I am part neanderthal,
therefore, it is not wrong
for me to live my best
caucasoid life: a murderer,
his wife, licking knives,
pointing out men I wish
to be lynched. I am a witch
because I want to talk nonstop
and make niggas drop.
Train hopping beside 9 bucks,
my girlfriend and I decide
to pickup tricks from
amongst the vagrants.
I play my part, scream
so loud with thrill I lose
my wits, it’s wet everywhere,
kids drip down my thigh
and I consider
what I’ve always been
guilty of, since I was Helen,
since my fathers invented Hell.
I can’t cock a gun ’cause I’m
a debutant counting coins,
wincing when lil nigger
fingers touch my hand.
Hiwot Adilow is author of the chapbooks IN THE HOUSE OF MY FATHER (@twosylviaspress) and PRODIGAL DAUGHTER (@akashicbooks, @AfricanPoetryBF). She is one of the 2018 recipients of the Brunel International African Poetry Prize and has been supported by the Pink Door Retreat and Callaloo Writers Workshop. Her writing appears in Winter Tangerine, Callaloo, The Offing, and Voicemail Poems, and has been anthologized in The BreakBeats Poets Vol 2.0: Black Girl Magic (Haymarket Books, 2018). Hiwot earned her BA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison as part of the First Wave Hip Hop and Urban Arts Learning Community where she studied Anthropology and African Studies.