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. 

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“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