From “Tempest”
caliban lies face down on a cot in a 6 x 9 x 12 jail cell
he writes a letter to his mother, sycorax
[caliban:]
some days raft
some days tire
some days sea ocean wrath
some days shore
some days coffin
some days van
some days la bestia
some days coyote
some days border patrol
some days militia
some days ditch
some days dry white bones in sand
some days bombings
some days refugee camps
some days treks through europe
some days slavers
some days 5—out in 3
some days 10 to 15 no parole
some days public defender
some days no play
but always, always,
we are trapped in a cell
the one inside or the one outside
Copyright © 2024 by Roberto Carlos Garcia. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 21, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.
“I’m writing a retelling of The Tempest inspired by Aimé Césaire’s adaptation, A Tempest. The work traces colonial, postcolonial, and neocolonial experiences through the play’s characters. In this poem, Caliban is a migrant refugee from Latin America, Western Asia, and Africa, and he is the hyphenated citizen of any Western nation. His journey ends like that of many a refugee or of the chronically poor who survive it: with imprisonment. My version, ‘Tempest,’ centers both Caliban’s and Sycorax’s truth and rage and unmasks the hypocrisies and contradictions inherent in capitalist, democratic, and religious institutions in Western nations.”
—Roberto Carlos Garcia
Roberto Carlos Garcia
Roberto Carlos Garcia was born in Harlem, New York. He is the author of What Can I Tell You?: Selected Poems (Flowersong Press, 2022); Elegies (Flower Song Press, 2020); and Melancolía (Červená Barva Press, 2016).
A 2023 New Jersey State Council of the Arts Poetry Fellow, Garcia is an assistant professor of English at Union County College and lives in New Jersey.