In commemoration of Day of the Imprisoned Writer coming up on November 15th, we present a translation of a poet in jail by a poet in jail. “June 12th, In Prison” was written by the Filipina poet and activist Kerima Lorena Tariman during her incarceration in 2000 for illegal possession of firearms, a common nonbailable and trumped-up charge used by the state against activists. The case was subsequently dismissed and Tariman was released after more than a year, though she would eventually die in 2021 at the age of forty-two at the hands of the Philippine military.

The poem has been translated by writer and activist Amanda Socorro L. Echanis, who was arrested in December 2020 (on similar trumped-up charges as Tariman twenty years prior). She was taken into custody along with her month-old baby, from whom she is now separated as she remains in jail. Echanis’s hearings have been repeatedly postponed and she remains in detention to this day. Echanis’s detainment occurs in the context of a larger government practice of “red-tagging” and misusing the justice system to detain activists and those critical of the government. Months prior to her own arrest, Echanis’s father, the peasant rights and peace advocate Randall Echanis, at age seventy-two, became a victim of rampant extrajudicial killings meant to silence longtime activists such as himself. He was brutally murdered at his home in Quezon City, along with his neighbor.

I

the back and forth
doesn’t even span five meters.
I suppose I’m lucky
the windows are a little bit big.
from here,
I have watched
how fast
the beans grow
when fertilizer is put into them.
the whole afternoon
is worth a pack of cigarettes.
in between puffs,
I struggle with words.
must read
must write
must listen
to the words, words,
words with no end,
with no bound.

II

I must remove
my brain
from my head.
I must find
the words
and pinch them between thumbnails,
like head lice.
when will the words
stop sipping
my blood?
never again, I hope.
never ever.
I will even let it
drip, drip:
rich, thick blood
rich, thick blood
from my skull
from my skull

III

am I here
to taste the long beans?
I bet they’d be delicious
especially if cooked as adobo.
tomorrow, boiled egg again
for breakfast.
that’s why I must,
must read
must write
must listen
to the words, words
words that breathe
in (and out!)
of these rusty bars.

IV

The here and there
are endless, boundless.
for the words,
words, words, words that create
words, words,
words, words,
words, WORDS!
meanwhile,
I empty the afternoon’s cigarette ashes
into a tin can.
the small flicker
lengthens
my life.