"...she is catalogue busty Oriental or steamy Latina. The girl next door is waiting for you to shoot your load"

“Young Americans birth gang rape over card games,” Barbara Jane Reyes calls out in her chapbook titled, Cherry, published by Portable Press @ Yo Yo Labs. In her opening poem, “Cherry,” Reyes masterfully evokes the ambiguous space of sexual pleasure within sexual violence. “[T]ears tender,” “ingests,” “pump fire,” and “invites entrance tinseled hostess” is experienced amidst the “liquored push,” “he advances inserts into girl,” “unripe cherry bleed/blow her rupture.” This collection is an absolute must read for those interested in gender and ethnic studies and for those wanting to better understand people in their life who have visceral, seemingly extreme reactions to the objectification of women in the mass media.

Ethnic prejudice and sexual violence, specifically against Filipinas, accumulates in Reyes use of a documentary poetics in the poem “E-Dialogue Over Bitter Chocolate.” News quotes discuss the colonization of the Philippines in relationship to contemporary consumerism: Wired News reports that the Spanish division of Nabisco defends the naming of their chocolate-covered cookie, “Filipinos.” A ten-year old male child to his Filipina nursemaid says, “Hey Cookie, I’m eating you!” After which follows statistics from the Centre for Philippine Concerns-Australia, on murders suspected or perpetrated by “the woman’s employer, husband, de-facto partner, ex-partner, or fiancé.” These images and news reports culminate in the poem’s final two stanzas. The reading experience is far too rewarding to ruin: you’ll have to see for yourself.

No aspect of sexualized ethnic abuse goes unexamined in Reyes inventive, fresh work. Every twist and turn in the poems' subjects provides a new way of seeing. Hope is given to the reader in the strength that we hear in the poet’s voice even when the speaker’s experiences, and by extension the readers’ experiences at times, “[become] tears in the wound, liquid, nude-come-shots, and singing, as we.” (Reyes, Cherry, “Selvedge”)

Cherry by Barbara Jane Reyes, published in 2008 by Portable Press @ Yo Yo Labs, Brooklyn, NY, is available for $7.00 at: http://tinyurl.com/yhg6ud2