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.