The poem begins with the speaker talking on the phone with a potential landlady, hoping to rent some sort of housing—likely an apartment or a room in a boarding house. The accommodation seems fine: it’s not too expensive, the location isn’t bad, and the landlady doesn’t live on the premises. There’s just one problem: the speaker is “African.”

The speaker refers to this moment as a “self-confession,” with the speaker's blackness being something that the landlady must be "warned" about. This language makes it sound as if there's something shameful or wrong about being “African,” but the speaker is being deliberately tongue-in-cheek here. The speaker isn’t personally ashamed of being “African”; rather, the speaker seems fully aware of society's racial prejudices and worries about what the landlady will think. The speaker confesses to being “African” to avoid taking a trip to see the rental only to be turned down simply for being black.

These opening lines also establish the poem's form. It's written in a distinctly casual tone, with many caesuras breaking up lines of various lengths. The form is free verse, meaning there isn't any overarching rhyme scheme or meter; instead, the poem flows along like a conversation–which, in a way, is exactly what it is.

It's also worth noting that until line 4, all the lines are enjambed. That gives the poem a kind of anxious speed, as though the speaker were rushing through the preliminaries, trying to get straight to the most difficult and essential point. Line 5 is then strongly end-stopped. This end-stop conveys certainty and self-assurance, especially after all the enjambed lines that precede it.