I'm back in effect, and this week, I am featuring, Filipinx poet, Ina Cariño. We discuss her work and her future plans and how she is holding up during this Coronavirus pandemic.
Note: I will be discussing how other writers/poets/artists and creatives are dealing with creating during these times.
http://yourartsygirlpodcast.com/episodes
Bio: Born in the Philippines, Ina Cariño is a queer Filipinx-American writer. She holds an MFA in creative writing from North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC, and is a 2019 Kundiman Fellow. Her work appears in Waxwing, New England Review, The Oxford Review of Books, Tupelo Quarterly, and VIDA Review, among other journals. In 2019, Ina founded a reading series in the Triangle area of NC called Indigena, which centers marginalized voices, including but not limited to those of BIPOC, QTPOC, and people with disabilities. Through her writing, Ina explores the navigation of being American as a brown body, and the deeply impactful effects of living in the diaspora. She hopes to find paths to not just justice, but also to healing of self and community.
It Feels Good to Cook Riceby Ina Cariño
it feels good to cook rice
it feels heavy to cook rice
it feels familiar
good
& heavy to cook rice
when I cook rice
it is because hunger is not just
an emptiness
but a longing for multo:
the dead who no longer linger
two fingers in water
I know just when to stop:
right under the second knuckle
in the morning chew it
with salted egg
in the evening chew it
with salted onion
at midnight eat it
slovenly
with your peppered hands licking
relishing each cloudmorsel
sucking greedy as if
there will no longer be any such thing
as rice
good
is not the idea of pleasure
rather
it is the way
I once tripped
spilled a basket
of hulls & stones onto soil —
homely sprinkle of husks
as if for a sending off —
how right it was: palms
brushing the chalk of it
swirls rising in streaking sun
heavy
is not the same as burden
rather it is falling rice
as ghostly footfalls —
trickling mounds
scattered on wood —
my dead lolo in compression socks
my dead lola in red slippers scuffing
& a slew of yesterday’s titos & titas
their voices traveling to me
tinny ringing
as if from yesterday’s nova
familiar just
what it sounds like
family
blood
home
marrow
bone
grit
calcified memories
of things that feel good
& heavy
calcified
as in made stronger by mountain sun
only to have them crumble
after enough time has passed
(just like the mountain forgot what it used to be)
still
it feels good to cook rice
it feels good to eat rice even by myself
& it feels familiar to know
with each grain I swallow
I strap myself to my own
heavy
hunger
------------------------------------------------------------
Below are links to her other works:
http://www.nereview.com/vol-40-no-3-2019/bitter-melon/http://waxwingmag.org/items/issue20/7_Carino-It-Feels-Good-to-Cook-Rice.php
https://readwildness.com/21/carino-bodies
https://www.the-orb.org/post/when-i-sing-to-myself-who-listens IG: @indigena.collective / Facebook: Facebook.com/indigenaNC/
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