All Black Boys Look Alike

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.