Toy Boat

The unnamed speaker of Vuong’s poem is considering both the titular toy boat and Tamir Rice (to whom the poem is dedicated) simultaneously. The fact that 12-year-old Rice was playing with a toy gun when he was shot and killed by a police officer lends a sense of solemnity and sorrow to the poem, as well as irony. Irony is “an incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result” (“Irony.” Merriam-Webster ). It’s cruelly ironic that Rice was playing with a toy gun when he was shot and killed with a real one. The somber tone of the poem in relation to the toy boat mimics this real-life irony. Toys (be they boats or guns) are supposed to be fun and playful, they aren’t supposed to be objects of serious and mournful contemplation—yet the speaker’s contemplation of the eponymous toy boat is grave and grief-stricken. Thus, the tone of the poem is serious, sad, and ironic all at once.

Since the speaker is thinking about both the toy boat and Rice at once, many moments in the poem have a double resonance. The first stanza reads: “yellow plastic / black sea” (Lines 1-2). Ostensibly, the “yellow plastic” refers to the titular toy boat situated on a “black sea,” which is likely also plastic, but this “yellow plastic” also parallels the toy gun Rice was playing with when he was killed by the police. In this latter interpretation, the “black sea” (Line 2) is Rice’s hands and body playing with the gun.

Additionally, “sea” (Line 2) is a homonym for “see.” Another interpretation of the opening stanza is that it suggests that the white officer who killed Rice did not see that Rice was a child playing with a toy, instead all he saw was that Rice was Black. Indeed, after the shooting, a police officer radioed in that Rice was Black and “maybe 20” (Dewan, Shaila and Richard A. Oppel Jr. “In Tamir Rice Case, Many Errors by Cleveland Police, Then a Fatal One.” New York Times, 22 January 2015). Rice was nowhere near 20 (a fully grown adult) and was in fact only 12. This also mirrors the paradox of the poem’s tone; what seems innocent and playful, like a toy boat, is portrayed as serious and somber with more gravity than it truly ought to bear, just as the innocence of a boy playing with a toy was interpreted through a darker lens and had a seriousness—and ultimately a tragedy—projected upon it by an outside force. Innocence and burden are flipped on their heads.

The second stanza describes an “eye-shaped shard / on a darkened map” (Lines 3-4). Ostensibly, this “eye-shaped shard” is the titular toy boat, but it could also refer to the bullet that killed Rice, because bullets are also “eye-shaped” (Line 3). Like the first stanza, the second stanza has a double resonance and could be interpreted as referring to the toy boat, Rice, or both.

The third and fourth stanzas read:

        no shores now

        to arrive—or

        depart

        no wind but

        this waiting which

        moves you

        as if the seconds

        could be entered

        & never left (Lines 5-13).

Just as with the stanzas before, these stanzas can be interpreted as referring to the titular toy boat—the toy boat is attached to a “black sea” (Line 2), but it does not have “shores” (Line 5) or “wind” (Line 8). And just as with the stanzas before, these stanzas can also be interpreted as referring to Rice. The word “now” in the line “no shores now” (Line 5) is an odd choice if this line is describing the toy boat. Toys are made to be durable, since children play with them, so while it’s possible the boat once had shores attached, in addition to the “black sea” (Line 2), this seems unlikely. What seems more plausible is that the first line of the third stanza, “no shores now” (Line 5), refers to Rice and his altered state “now” that he is dead. Since a police officer killed him, Rice is no longer attached to the “shores” (Line 5) of the world and the living. In this interpretation, “to arrive—or / depart” (Lines 6-7) refers to the question of whether death represents an arrival in the afterlife or a departure from living (or both).

In this latter interpretation, what follows death is depicted first as stillness: “no wind” (Line 8) and “waiting” (Line 9). Yet, there is a profound change, “this waiting . . . / moves you” (Lines 9-10). Here, the “you” (Line 10) could refer to the titular toy boat, but it makes more sense to interpret this “you” as referring to Rice. We don’t typically use the second-person pronoun “you” to refer to toys. It would be more natural to refer to the toy boat as “it.” We do, however, often refer to people we are directly addressing as “you,” and since “Toy Boat” is written “For Tamir Rice,” it seems the “you” on Line 10 likely refers to Rice. In this interpretation, though death represents a profound change that “moves you” (Line 10), the following stanza again depicts death as stillness: “as if the seconds / could be entered / & never left” (Lines 11-13). This is a complex and somewhat surprising portrayal of death, because death is depicted as—at once—a profound change that “moves” (Line 10) and a stilling and slowing down. Yet both things can be true of death.

At the outset of the fifth stanza, the poem seems more focused on the boat than on Rice, as this stanza begins with the eponymous toy:

        toy boat—oarless

        each wave

        a green lamp

        outlasted (Lines 14-17).

Ostensibly, this is a description of the toy boat, which is “oarless” (Line 14) and the waves it faces are made of green light instead of plastic: “each wave / a green lamp” (Lines 15-16). Yet Rice is present in the word “outlasted” (Line 17). There is poignancy in the idea that a toy boat outlasted the life of Rice, a young child.

Stanza six also begins with the titular toy:

        toy boat

        toy leaf dropped

        from a toy tree

        waiting (Lines 18-21).

Two interpretations are possible here—either the toy boat has been joined by a “toy leaf dropped / from a toy tree” (Lines 19-20) and is “waiting” (Line 21) with this second toy, or the toy boat is being compared metaphorically to a “toy leaf dropped / from a toy tree” (Lines 19-20). Either way, the toy-ness, or fakeness, of the object is emphasized. The word “toy” is repeated three times in this four-line stanza (Lines 18, 19, and 20). The sixth stanza also emphasizes the passivity of the toy boat, as it is “waiting” (Line 21). This stanza relates to Rice as well because, like the toy boat, the toy gun Rice was playing with when he was shot by the police was also fake and passive (Rice could not have killed anyone with this toy).

A single-word-line “waiting” ends the sixth stanza (Line 21) and begins the seventh stanza (Line 22). Thus, the passivity that ends the sixth stanza is also emphasized at the beginning of the seventh. The poem concludes, not with the titular toy, but with real birds:

        as if the sp-

        arrows

        thinning above you

        are not

        already pierced

        by their own names (Lines 23-28).

While the previous stanzas have been focused on the titular toy boat, this stanza focuses on the real. The structure of the poem is, therefore, mimetic of the way that racism and police brutality burst in on Rice while he was playing with a toy—the poem focuses on the toy, then suddenly in the final stanza shifts to the world outside of the realm of play. In the final stanza, the name of the birds is hyphenated and broken across two lines: “sp- / arrows” (Lines 23-24). This emphasizes the weapons embedded in the birds’ name: “arrows” (Line 24). The sharp, single-word-line “arrows” (Line 24) also evokes the imagery of a bullet and how it pierced the body.

The final lines ostensibly describe the sparrows “already pierced \ by their own names” (Lines 27-28). The literal interpretation here is that the sparrows are already pierced by the “arrows” within the word sparrows. Another possible interpretation, however, is that these final lines are a comment on how Rice’s skin color was a factor in his death. In the United States, Black people are far more likely to be killed by the police than white. Rice’s skin color was a part of his identity, like his name. The cop who shot Rice was wrong in thinking that Rice was holding a real gun, wrong in thinking that Rice posed a threat, and wrong in thinking that Rice was an adult. In fact, the only thing this police officer appears to have perceived correctly about Rice before he shot him was that Rice was Black.

The titular toy boat is nowhere to be found in the final lines of Vuong’s poem. Nonetheless, these final lines, like the lines before, have a double resonance—they are evocative of sparrows and of the killing of Rice by a police officer.