Grinding Cacao
By Ryan Caidic
Ryan Caidic is a Filipino creative director based in Germany. His advertising work has won nearly every major global award from London International Awards, Clios, to the New York Festivals. Meanwhile, his poetry has been shortlisted in the Prism Pacific Spirit Poetry Prize, the Wolverhampton Poetry Festival, longlisted in the Yeovil Poetry Prize, and is forthcoming in Eunioa Review, Front Porch Review, Rising Phoenix Review, Southword, Mobius and elsewhere.
There is Nothing Left but the Bruised Sky
by Shakiba Hashemi
The heirloom beans that were, for a week, fermented
inside used ice cream tins, are ready for roasting. Stewing
in cacao wine, I plucked the beans from calico pods,
cleaving for sweet earthy pearls. I sucked and spat
the fussilade seeds, saving them for my weekend
mother, who I also called, Nanay, the nanny who took
care of my father as a young boy, who took care of me on days
when my real mother would work shifts in hospital,
whose heart was a furnace that fed two generations
with cassava, whose hands coaxed life from droughts.
In her scorching hut, Nanay guzzles down the fermented
wine then kisses immaculate her Marian
scapular. A laugh runs through her heron neck, as she
roasts the beans on volcanic
pan with arms that pull from the skies, folding back
into the air the spicy scent of wild chocolates. With what’s left
of her wings, she flips the beans to god, catches
them on a tray, while I wait for the best part—the milling. With her mother
talons she funnels the beads into the grinder’s small mouth. It is my turn
to turn and turn the iron with little hands. ‘Go on,’
she chirps. ‘It may not happen all at once.’ I churn
and churn, with all my might, I go
on until the tablea reveals itself,
as brown as her camphoric skin, as rich
as inherited soil. With a knife she shapes the velvet, showing me
how to cut constellations.
*Nanay –Filipino for mother
*Tablea-pure Filipino chocolate paste