I'm So Fine — Triangle House

Jul 25

Jul 25 I'm So Fine

I MET MARCUS CHONG ON THE 105 BUS METHOD ACTING I was going home in a flowered dress after work I worked at Fatburger I was 18 & I think he was twice that I had my uniform in my backpack with my Statistics homework & Woman Warrior I recognized him & said I liked Panther (this was way before The Matrix) he asked for my number we talked on the phone he came to visit me on his bike since he didn’t live far from my job & ordered a veggie burger I had a lemonade on my 15-minute break in my black Fatburger outfit & ugly foodservice shoes he asked me on a date I said yes he called with the plan I said I thought we were going somewhere but he wanted to make me dinner at his house I said No I don’t know you well enough to go to your house he got angry The End

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I MET CUBA GOODING JR. AT THE BEVERLY CENTER FOOD COURT I was 16 Boyz N the Hood had just come out & my best friend Tiffany dared me to ask if I could hug him he said I was beautiful & seemed really happy to get that hug but I brown-blushed nervously & he sat a few booths away with his friend & veggie slices from Sbarro & smiled a lot I wore Tiff’s Kente cloth bomber jacket & red lipstick I had perfect skin & didn’t drink carbonated beverages

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THE BEVERLY CENTER FOOD COURT IS ALSO WHERE I MET DEVANTE’S BROTHER FROM JODECI I forgot his name but we didn’t really meet he was just looking at my eyes then looking at my ass as I kept walking I really liked red lipstick back then I got it that day with my saved allowance at Rexall across the street a blue-red in a gold case & we both had on white jeans I was 17 & I remember it was summer

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DAVE CHAPPELLE ALSO LOOKED AT MY ASS & he also said Daaaaaaaaaaaamn we were in the frozen food section at Ralph’s in North Hollywood & I half-smiled I was wearing my favorite old Levis with the hole at the left side belt loop & had just moved back to L.A. with my two-year-old

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CHRIS ROCK DID THE SAME THING same jeans at the movie theater across from the Beverly Center & he thought he wouldn’t be recognized with that newsboy cap on but I saw him he looked twice

Khadijah Queen

Khadijah Queen is the author of five books, most recentlyI'm So Fine: A List of Famous Men & What I Had On (YesYes Books 2017). Earlier poetry collections includeConduit (Akashic / Black Goat 2008), Black Peculiar(Noemi Press 2011) and Fearful Beloved (Argos Books 2015). Her verse play Non-Sequitur (Litmus Press 2015) won the Leslie Scalapino Award for Innovative Women's Performance Writing. The prize included a full staged production of the play at Theaterlab NYC from December 10 - 20, 2015 by Fiona Templeton's The Relationship theater company. Individual poems and prose appear or are forthcoming in Fence, Tin House, American Poetry Review, Buzzfeed, Gulf Coast, Poor Claudia, The Offing, jubilat, Memoir, Tupelo Quarterly, Best American Nonrequired Reading, DIAGRAM, The Volta Book of Poets,LitHub, The Force of What's Possible and widely elsewhere. Reviews of her work can be found in O Magazine, The New Yorker, Rain Taxi, BOMB Magazine, SCOUT, Publishers Weekly, Los Angeles Review, Open Letters Monthly, The Volta, Kenyon Review, Boston Review, and other publications. She serves as core faculty in poetry and playwriting for the new Mile-High MFA in creative writing at Regis University.

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