Track: "Gaze," Sweetback, feat. Amel Larrieux (1996)

By Barbara Jane Reyes
Squeeze your hand into a fist. Now, loosen, just a bit.
                                       They say that is the heart, heat, fiber, sugar. Cut
                around its core, score and invert. Take your teeth
                                       to its golden flesh and bite. They say this is the heart
                                of a lovely girl. In these stories, there is always a girl,
lovely as that dream just before waking. There is always
                               a girl, whose dainty feet make light where she toe-taps
               the earth, so soft. Elders tell her patience will saint her.
And so she waits. There is always heartbreak, chambers
                              washed in longing, pulsing dark inside the body. She waits.
They say she waited with the waning moon, until the dawn.
                               She waited. Press your index finger and tall finger
                                                into the underside of your jawbone, and count.

Copyright Credit: Barbara Jane Reyes, "Track: “Gaze,” Sweetback, feat. Amel Larrieux (1996)" from Letters to a Young Brown Girl.  Copyright © 2020 by Barbara Jane Reyes.  Reprinted by permission of BOA Editions, Ltd., www.boaeditions.org.
Source: Letters to a Young Brown Girl (BOA Editions, Ltd., www.boaeditions.org, 2020)