Smith’s poem is written in free verse in one unrhymed stanza with no metering or line breaks. The form allows for a conversational, informal voice to come through, and the voice's stream-of-consciousness reflections adds to the highly personal and candid tone of the poem.

Even though “& even the black guy’s profile” is a prose poem that departs from conventional poetry forms, Smith still includes repetition and anaphora to establish both rhythm and structure throughout the short piece. As a tightly confined single stanza poem, “& even the black guy’s profile” builds on itself with repeated words and phrases: “&” is repeated in the title and five times in the text (Lines 3-5) of the poem, while “you” is repeated six times in the second-to-last and final statements of the poem (Lines 3-5). These repeated words help build an internal tension and rhythm to an otherwise open form poem.

While traditionally anaphora includes the repetition of a word or phrase at the start of multiple lines in the poem, Smith uses this poetic device to build the initial calls to action.