Three Poets on Climate Change
If Moses was Filipino
By Venezia May
Marnie tells me that she is a swimmer
tells me that from as young as she can remember
she has been floating through floodwater
tells me that sometimes when it happens
she imagines she is baby Moses
floating down the Nile
waiting for a queen to find her.
Underneath a corrugated metal roof
rusty from ravaging torrents
underneath a corrugated metal roof
the only respite for her and her baby girls
she shows me her swimming gear:
her contact dermatitis wetsuit
the glass-cut scars framing her eyes
like a snorkel
her wrinkled feet that she claims are nearly webbed.
She tells me:
When it floods in metro Manila every year
and you are seven-years-old
you are happy. School’s out and
all you think about is jumping
into brick-red water mud wrestling
with the neighbour’s daughter
leaping frogging to hang off basketball rims
you can finally reach. There are
cockroaches clinging to your shirt collar
rats burrowing themselves into your pockets
and you imagine yourself as Noah’s ark.
But when it floods in metro Manila every year
and you find yourself a mother
to two seven-year-old daughters
you learn to keep everything precious on your body.
Marnie sleeps with her wrists bound
to her daughters’ pigtails
passports bandaged into her sports bra
her family members tattooed on her rib cage
one daughter a goldfish another a crocodile
everyone is an aquatic animal
— that is how she calms herself waking up
choking from her dreams
knowing they can swim
she imagines her scars turning to gills
and finally starts to breathe.
When it floods in metro Manila every year
you learn to keep everything precious on your body
and anything else you commit to memory
how every year the reality for Filipinos in Metro Manila
is the scramble from mattress to roof holding
a chair
a baby
a teapot
an urn
watching as a furious liquid Pharaoh
swallows everything they own
unleashing his sea of men
enslaving them in their own land.
But Marnie still tells me that she is a swimmer
tells me that from as young as she can remember
she has been floating through floodwater
tells me that sometimes when it happens
she imagines she is Moses
standing in front of the Red Sea
and this time, she manages to part it.
Ecopoet and spoken word artist, Venezia May is interested in unpacking narratives that surround social and environmental issues. Her poems have been published in three anthologies in London and Singapore, and she has been featured in Singapore-based Spoke & Bird Poetry Open Mic Show. She won the 2018 and 2019 Causeway Exchange Poetry Slam (competition between Singapore and Malaysia), and emerged runner-up at the Asia Pacific Poetry Slam. She also co-produced Nervous Laughter in 2019 as part of Climate Change Theatre Action (CCTA), which was a climate change theatre and spoken word show exploring the conflicting emotions we feel when discussing and reading about climate change. Instagram handle: @venemay.poetry Website: venemay.com
*
Messages from the Chairman
By Jaime Oscar M. Salazar
This found poem alludes to the 2012 Padcal mine disaster in the northern Philippines, which involved the spillage of over 20 million tons of mine tailings from a storage facility into two bodies of freshwater. Tailings are the waste materials left over from ore extraction. Although tests showed that the heavy metals detected in samples of water and fish from the affected freshwater bodies were within the official limits set by the government, environmental advocates have warned of long-term consequences to the entire ecosystem. The disaster has been described as the biggest of its kind in the country. "Messages from the Chairman" is drawn from the similarly titled sections of the 2012 and 2013 annual reports of Philex Mining Corporation, which is set to operate Padcal mine until 2024.
1. VALUENATION
The incident at
Padcal mine? Meager
accident. Permit
me now the line on
unprecedented
rains. We recognized
losses; however,
they do not form part
of core net relish.
I would confine you
to seeing in two
dimensions alone.
Beyond these—people,
possible harm, less
than best billion. Men,
women deliver
adversities home,
refuse to mark us
as which helps improve
lives, stands for brightly.
2. pro·gres·sion
Returned to profit-
ability and
significant growth
in the tonnes: being
granted a lifting
by the mines bureau
enabled the turn
-around at Padcal—
critical in the
planned expansion of
dividends. Share our
commitment to sound
compliant as we
improve our focus
on acquisitions,
regard opportune
gains, enjoy the work
of our employees.
I continue to
count and take anew.
Jaime Oscar M. Salazar lives in Pasig City, Philippines. His writings on contemporary art, film, and theater have appeared in print and online publications.
*
Vessel
By Shuchi
A woman expecting, carrying a new life, is glowing
with the swatches of sweat.
Her belly resembles the tan earthen pots
she is carrying on her head.
In the brown parchland,
where thorns decorate the thin flora and feed the fickle fauna,
she is walking a mile-long furnace
under the thorny, terracotta sun.
The barren passing clouds hold no hope for her;
she worries about the coming days,
when all the water will run dry
in the earth's receptacles nearby.
Not just outside, she worries about the ocean
around her navel,
but doesn't care how heavy the pots are,
after she fills them to the brim, like a greedy woman.
As she stacks them on her head, in a slow dance, one by one,
it brings her to think of the day of her marriage,
when her groom and she had climbed up the camel
meant to be her dowry, and they had sailed over several dunes – of sand.
It's been six months since he’s on the move, leaving her behind;
the shrinking commons are a trouble for their kind.
Would he find decent pastures for the herd?
After miles of walk, would he be allowed a patch for rest?
Three more months for him to return
with a few kin and a hundred of the herd.
By the time he is back, she will have a child,
a small addition, to their tiny herd.
Lambent, like a tide, she holds her vessels
high and tight and walks like lightning – pledging to go the distance, everyday;.
she will even overlook the thirsty carcass of the camel.
She clears her face of the odhni, pulling it away.
Shuchi is a resident of Singapore, who moved there just last year from India. She writes and publishes poetry on Medium.com. She also writes personal essays, short stories, and children’s literature. Working on her novel keeps her busy. She was recently placed third in Singapore Unbound's flash fiction contest.
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