Arts
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 ------------------------------------------------------------ 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/