Levine’s poem is comprised of 33 lines of lyrical verse that do not employ a consistent rhyme pattern nor have a definitive meter. These lines are divided into five stanzas. By using anaphora and cataloguing, Levine creates a rhythm of repetitive phrases and social wrongs to show the oppressive conditions in which African Americans in Detroit lived. As Levine told The Atlantic, he was interested in recreating the rhythm employed in a poem by 18th-century poet Christopher Smart: “We only have a fragment of [Smart’s poem]. It's a sort of call-and-response poem—very incantatory. I said, ‘That's the rhythm I'm going to try and use.’” (See: Further Reading & Resources).

Levine was also inspired by the Black dialect of his coworker who he described as “a black guy named Eugene.” Spreading car parts over old bags, Eugene “held up a sack, and on it were the words ‘Detroit Municipal Zoo.’ And he laughed, and said, ‘They feed they lion they meal in they sacks.’” Levine noted that he thought, “This guy’s a genius with language. He laughed when he said it, because he knew that he was speaking an English that I didn’t speak, but that I would understand.