Episode 51: Ina Cariño

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

www.inacarino.com

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 Rice

---

by 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

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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/