Poetry
SUMMER 2023200 Nautical Miles
by RINA GARCIA CHUA
“The Chinese have already swallowed Karburo whole, but that area is really ours,” said Johnny Sonny Geruela, using the Filipino name for Scarborough. Mr. Geruela lives in Masinloc, a small fishing community just 124 nautical miles from the shoal.
—Jason Gutierrez, “Overwhelmed by Chinese Fleets, Filipino Fishermen ‘Protest and Adapt’”
buro: pickle—
salt, ferment—
in salt. To pickle—
To salt. An island*—
is naturally formed—
surrounded by water—
but above water—
at high tide. We—
have been swallow—
(ed). The enemy—
is p o w e r f u l
these waters are—
not ours no more—
We have fished—
here ever since—
buro: to pickle, to—
accidentally sink, to—
suck the salt out, to—
birth islands. To salt—
waters. Taking fish in—
industrial boats. To scar—
is to rip the ocean apart—
and suck the life
out of islands—
to sink—
to fish. to salt. to sink. to tide. over.
*The definition of an island is from Article 121 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
Untitled by Edward Mitchell Bannister (1868)
Rina Garcia Chua
Rina Garcia Chua is a creative and critical scholar from the Philippines who is currently based in British Columbia, Canada. Her poems have been previously published in World Literature Today, Asteri(x), and The Goose, among others. Rina is completing her poetry chapbook, “A Geography of (Un)Natural Hazards,” which is a visual and poetic response to migrant and arrivant cultures, liminal environments, and violences of form and language.