All Black Boys Look Alike
By John Warner Smith
⠀
If you sit a few feet away
from this hand fan that once advertised
Amos Moses Barber Shop in New Orleans,
or if you hold it under a dimly glowing light
in a darkened, half-empty room,
⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀all you see are eighteen black boys,
⠀
their moon-shaped heads
tilting in slightly different directions,
hair trimmed low or nearly bald,
and foreheads bulging
like summer-blooming bulbs.
⠀
Their faces tell nothing
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀of what they feel and see,
⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀what men they will become,
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀and what they don’t know
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀of days they have yet to live,
⠀
when eyes that look at them will shut,
and they will be unseen, untaught,
passed by, forgotten, called other names,
or arrested, handcuffed, and jailed
for crimes they didn’t commit,
⠀
or maybe they will vanish
in the night inside an alley, a forest
or a river, or be left to dangle
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀and drip from the branch of a tree,
⠀
and like clouds of smoke,
their brown skin and charred dreams
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀will eclipse the rays beaming
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀toward the feet of their children.
⠀
Inside brightly-lit, crowded rooms
built of race-etched stone walls
that gird and divide their country,
these boys are the faces of all black men.
