For the City that Nearly Broke Me

This collection of 28 poems is Barbara Jane Reyes at her urban political and poetic best. M. Evelina Galang, author of Her Wild American Self and One Tribe, writes: “Scribe of global soundscape, Reyes builds upon the heartbeat of literary and blood ancestors, feeding her ‘mythic thirst for home’ as she journeys back to cities devastated and torn by the politics of race, history, class and sexuality, greeting her like an outsider. And still, despite the cities’ fall from grace, each gritty image, drawn on multiple languages and rhythms, is a love song, a reflection, a naming of the self. Bittersweet, powerful and precise, I adore this important book and the work of Barbara Jane Reyes.”