a “figure of man and woman all together” —Vocabulario de la lengua tagala, 1613
mornings, I braid wet black hair quick & taut after bathing.
the health of flock & herds depends on the rain.
I’ve met those wooden figures, both male & female sleepy in granaries.
say, water—say loving words like fish, fruit, fowl.
my body is not a museum—rather, a site of excavation.
fields at planting time: the balance of everything.
artifacts abound: wordless songs while washing rice.
Lakapati, feed your servants—let them not starve.
& the origins of my hair? my gender? my praise & jargon?
(s)he was a goddess, s(he) was a king.
see my grandfather’s Spanish-blue eyes—slick marbles spinning.
deities tend to disappear upon first contact.
I still ask for permission, walking over grass & roots.
on full moons, offerings of herbs to stave off hunger.
I am hungry, even when I eat. will I ever be full
such binaries—rife with oppression, thievery, forgetfulness—
neither male nor female; both masculine & feminine.
smallest unhusked grain of rice—masculine, feminine whole.
Originally from Baguio City in the Philippines, Ina Cariño is a 2022 Whiting Award winner for poetry. Their work appears in the American Poetry Review, the Margins, Guernica, Poetry Northwest, Poetry Magazine, the Paris Review Daily, New England Review, and elsewhere. She is the winner of the 2021 Alice James Award for Feast, published by Alice James Books in March 2023. Their forthcoming collection Reverse Requiem is slated for publication in April 2026 (Alice James Books). In 2019, Ina founded a poetry reading series called Indigena Collective, a platform that aims to center marginalized creatives in the NC community and beyond.
