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/