Brown Girl Sings Whalesong
by Barbara Jane Reyes
When they say you are as big as a lumpy, blubbery whale,
you may go ahead and bellow deep. Creak,
croon, and trill, moan low. Go ahead, open your mouth so wide, that
you can swallow the sea. Know that your blood pulls you through
what your oldest ancestors committed to heart. Remember
you have touched the ocean floor, and you have made your garden there.
Remember, your skin is thick. Remember, no one has tamed you.
Yes, you are immense, your lifespan and memory long,
your heart larger than a full-grown man. Your lungs carry air for us all.
Your ribcage could be a refuge. Your skull is a cavern of deep song.
Through murk and poison, you move true with the moon.
Your body lights a million lanterns. Your deep pitched song finds your sisters,
your mother. They say the earth’s most unruly parts sing like you.
Barbara Jane Reyes is the author of Invocation to Daughters (City Lights Publishers). She was born in Manila, Philippines, raised in the SF Bay Area, and is the author of four previous poetry collections: Gravities of Center, Poeta en San Francisco, Diwata, and To Love as Aswang. She is also the author of the chapbooks Easter Sunday (Ypolita Press), Cherry (Portable Press), and For the City that Nearly Broke Me (Aztlán Libre Press). She is an adjunct professor at University of San Francisco’s Yuchengco Philippine Studies Program and has taught at San Francisco State University and Mills College. She currently serves as an Advisory Board Member for Philippine American Writers and Artists (PAWA). She lives with her husband, poet Oscar Bermeo, in Oakland.
"Where My Dreaming and My Loving Live: Poetry & the Body" is the second annual offering of the Poetry Coalition -- more than twenty organizations nationwide dedicated to working together to promote the value poets bring to our culture and communities, as well as the important contributions poetry makes in the lives of people of all ages and backgrounds. A founder member of the Coalition, Letras Latinas at Notre Dame's Institute's for Latino Studies has partnered with the Best American Poetry blog to present 10 poems by women in March that engage with this year's theme, which borrows a line from U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith's "Flores Woman." The poems in this project were curated by Emma Trelles.
