Ina Cariño
Litanies for the Dead
Death is rightly considered by most Filipinos as an altogether new existence.
—Catholic priest and folklorist Francisco Demetrio
they say a man without a shadow will soon die.
try not to trample on a man’s shadow.
but when a man loses his shadow, his dog will howl.
burn sweets for the dead to appease his soul.
yes, when a man loses his shadow, swathe mirrors
with the thickest cloth, lest he trap you behind the glass.
feed the dead. on worthy plate, parcel out rice,
simmered meat, for fullness in the afterlife.
after the meal, shatter the plate—proof
of your grief. offer the shards to the dead.
there must always be someone guarding the casket,
always someone watching the passing soul.
snap a rosary apart, place it in the hands of the dead—
unbroken beads foretell continuous deaths.
to keep phantom footsteps from drumming through
the house, the body must be buried without shoes.
once the procession begins, don’t look back.
widows must stay home, can’t look at all.
if you pass a procession, throw a fistful of coins—
fare for the dead on their way to heaven.
don’t let your tears fall onto the wood.
the dead do not let go of us so quickly.
but if it rains on the casket, angels do weep.
heaven laments the loss of the dead.
after the burial, let your hands soak up sap
from guava leaves, to ward off wicked spirits.
& on your way home, confuse the dead.
wander & stop. smoke a clove cigarette.
every night, dream of the dead: those who have gone,
those yet to go. those who insist on staying.
Deluge
my heart was drowned in valley rains, like how my once-grandfather lost his pulse after the mountain collapsed in on itself. I still dream about missing villages, even as I dream of holding a parasol over a white woman’s head, her ivory skirt barely dragging dirt. I dream as if I’ll remember harder from it, pulse one of soil, transplantation, as if I’ll never stop hearing stones shifting beneath my feet. hundreds dead in one go. I, too, am made of ghost. see my reflection, brow haunted by ghostmama & ghostpapa in the mirror—those nights they tempest-danced on rooftops before the fighting started—eyes inky, manes dripping under typhoon. these days my dove-hands are soft & frightened as thunder echoes the brave terrain. I wait for the stars to tell of my shame: song of belonging once tender, now barbed. family can be family, but I crave untethering, crack joints, spark synapses, grasp around for a different life. even now I shiver blue under a quarreling sky—can’t forget father’s good name, mother’s crooked teeth, cousins flinging grit at my windows after school. & there will always be such ghosts. but ghosts are ancestral memory ferrying my heart back to myself. my heart cascades into silence when I think about death. the valley where I was born has been swallowed up forever. death is when a ghost catches up to its own body. I pretend I’ve claimed storms, but I’m the one who’s been claimed. I never wanted to be the same as the water outside, blood of earth & root, memories thick like mud around my grandmothers’ crumbling graves. still, when I close my eyes, my pulse is of spittling dogs, of last year’s deadly squalls. pulse of yesterday’s martyrs. pulse upon familial pulse.
Ina Cariño is a 2022 Whiting Award winner with an MFA in creative writing from North Carolina State University. Their poetry appears in the American Poetry Review, the Margins, Guernica, Poetry Northwest, Poetry Magazine, the Paris Review Daily, Waxwing, New England Review, and elsewhere. She is a Kundiman fellow and is the winner of the 2021 Alice James Award for Feast, forthcoming from Alice James Books in March 2023. In 2021, Ina was selected as one of four winners of the 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest. • Photo by Sass Art