Boy

by Sheila Carter-Jones

Other teachers think he is strange. It isn’t
his almond colored skin. It is his eyes.
They are blue as if the ocean is in him and
the water has risen up past his lids into his
pupils. His eyes are placid. The calmness
makes teachers question. They want to know
how this ocean happened. It is odd. Makes
them uncomfortable. Doesn’t make sense.
He isn’t what they expect. Not mean. Not
loud. Or, a smart aleck. It would be easier
to label him a troublemaker if he had regular
eyes. Remove him from their discomfort.
They would feel less threatened by the way
his body in motion appears to be still. He is
just a boy with a soft voice. When he makes
comments or answers questions in class his
eyes are words and his voice is held back by
a blush. When his mouth swells into a smile
his cheeks puff up as if to make his eyes two,
distant, blue suns rising together and
scattering light. Other teachers ask over and
over if I can believe such a thing as a brown
boy with blue eyes. I say, Yes, I see him. I see
how he dreams in his Air Jordans. How his
voice carries him up before his body is a
bubble bursting. Before other teachers insist,
he will never be anything. I wish they could
have seen him beyond their horizon. How he
wouldn’t become a negative statistic but
graduate from high school as a promise with
a scholarship. How he would become an
engineer, outstanding employee and featured
as a fine example. See his wife, a scientist, and
their baby born with a smile. How he works
full-time, has his own side business clearing
weeds, landscaping, and making way for
planting seeds. The young boys he hires are
quiet. They blush too.

Read poems by Sheila Carter Jones in Three Birds Deep, available for purchase online.

Invitation for Writing & Reflection: Think back to a time when you labeled someone before you fully knew them, then later realized your mistake. How does it feel to look “beyond the horizon” of someone’s outer identity, and see more deeply into who they are? How can we keep ourselves from defining each other, and stay open to the possibilities in each of us?

ABOUT THE POET: Sheila Carter-Jones

Sheila L. Carter-Jones is the author of Three Birds Deep, the 2012 winner of the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Book Award judged by Elizabeth Alexander and the chapbook Blackberry Cobbler Song. Her chapbook Crooked Star Dream Book was named Honorable Mention for the 2013 New York Center for Book Arts Chapbook Contest. She is a fellow of Cave Canem, Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop and a Walter Dakin Fellow of the 2015 Sewanee Writer’s Conference. Her poetry has been published in various anthologies and journals. She has been described by Herbert Woodward Martin as one who writes with immediacy of tone, voice and language. Grace Cavalieri, current Poet Laureate of Maryland, describes her poems as calling out against poetry of persuasion and contrivance. Sheila holds an MFA from Carlow University.

POETRY SELECTION AND COMMENTARY BY JAMES CREWS

James Crews is the author of four collections of poetry: The Book of What Stays, Telling My Father, Bluebird, and Every Waking Moment. He is also the editor of two anthologies: Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, The Sun, and have been reprinted in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry and featured on Tracy K. Smith’s podcast, The Slowdown. James teaches at SUNY-Albany and lives with his husband in Vermont.

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