when you are raised on The Wiz,
there is nothing The Wizard of Oz
can do for you
there is no Dorothy like
Diana no Good Witch but
Lena
no place like home
so, when i finally met the
Wizard, i thought myself a black
joke,
a lost girl led astray
now, if I were Evilene,
perhaps, I would’ve snapped
when I caught wind of the original
but I ain’t no Mabel
King, can’t make a fuss
when nobody’s listenin’
ain’t but one worker in my
sweatshop of a flesh suit,
i’m the only dancer trapped in my skin,
and there’s only so much
disappointment a youngin’ and her
beast of burdens
can take
Jordan Taliha McDonald is a essayist, critic, cultural worker, and (sometimes) poet from Seat Pleasant, Maryland. Her work has appeared in Vulture, The Offing, Artsy, Africa is a Country, The Believer, Blacks Rule, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and more. She is a graduate student at Harvard University studying Black literature(s) and rhetoric, among other things. She is famously an Aries.