LANGSTON HUGHES TRIBUTE ISSUE Joseph Ross   ON LANGSTON HUGHES' "THEME FOR ENGLISH B" for Kevin Nelson, 1985-2004 When I told my creative writing class of high school seniors to let a “a page come out” of them, to write something “true,” they looked at me like I was slow. “Write something true?” Hythia said, in her Pontius Pilate accent. “What is True?” “Well,” I explained, “Sit with that idea for a minute and see what comes.” It wasn’t the first time my prompt for in-class writing stumbled and fell to the floor between my black students and me, their white poetry teacher. But it was a first, a few days later, when our discussion led Kevin to say “Maybe everything is true.”     Joseph Ross has published poems in Poet Lore, both volumes of the anthology Poetic Voices Without Borders, and Full Moon on K Street: Poems About Washington, DC. He co-edited Cut Loose the Body: An Anthology of Poems on Torture and Fernando Botero's Abu Ghraib, and has read in the Miller Cabin Series and the Library of Congress Poetry at Noon Series. He teaches in the College Writing Program at American University.   Published in Volume 12, Number 1, Winter 2011.   To read more by this author: Joseph Ross: Evolving City Issue Joseph Ross: Floricanto Issue