Feast by Ina Cariño

Author:Ina Cariño
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Alice James Books

//

shins bramble-scratched,

soggy socks streaked with mud.

you crawl to the front door,

find it locked tight. your body

throbs, cold from the frost

on the ground. you think you hear

your mother calling. you think

you are mother—

you think you are calling.

YESTERDAY'S TRAUMAS, TODAY'S SALT

my family dines luxurious—peasant food in crystal bowls:

seven thousand six hundred forty-one islands jostling in my soup.

here is Luzon, Visayas, Mindanao—grandmother points to mounds

dunking up & down in the saltbroth. & rice, don’t forget the rice,

which she steamed in the old palayok—earthen pot & lid,

unglazed red clay lending its savage tang to the soft white.

grandmother makes the sign of the cross. archipelago is just another word

for slaughtered, amen, & I chomp on palmfuls of dirt, grease rivering

down my neck—push rice into my open maw. remnants of

a sepia life slosh in the silt of my stomach. because my stolen body

is still burdened with salt, my tongue pinched with its bite, I salt

bitter gourd, drown it in vinegar. I salt fish bellies to dry under sun.

I salt the rice heavy when the meat is low, to trick my stomach

out of hunger. my muscles still remember old aches—as if suspended

in the salt of an ocean I crossed alone. how much can the body take?

a certain kind of pain, this accumulation of salt. I was named anguish

before I was born, crooked teeth crowd my mouth, my fangs rake ash

& soil. will I die when the muck hits my bloodstream. yes I salt, keep—

tuck things away—coins still line the hems of my grandfather’s coat.

I clamor at the sight of salt spilled, grit skidding under broom spindles.

but I pucker from too much salt, fingers withered, oldest ginger. tongue

brined, voice washed by white—my name flapping out of my mouth—

an unfamiliar moth. its chalkwings dust my chin as I swallow

seven thousand six hundred forty-one islands: the only home I know.

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