A poem by award-winning poet Ana Maria Caballero.

Caballero's writing has won the Beverly International Prize for Literature, Colombia's José Miguel Arango National Poetry Prize, been nominated for a Pushcart Prize + been a finalist for the Academy of American Poets Prize.

Her digital art was exhibited at Dreamverse 2021 and won a Sevens Foundation Grant. Her NFTs are available via Async, Foundation, Etherpoems, OBJKT and, soon, SuperRare.

anamariacaballero.com

++

MASTER is part of BLUE PRINTS, a closed collection of five poems that subtly responds to the concept of a "roadmap" vis à vis the creative process. Rather than asking where art may lead, Caballero invites readers to consider where art comes from by sharing her own poetic practice.

The media-rich poems in Caballero's BLUE PRINTS collection are linked graphically but also thematically. Each poem approaches the question of what drives literary creation from a different perspective, but, in all, inevitability is palpable.

For Caballero, writing is not a matter of choice or of destination--instead, writing is her blueprint--at once origin, essence and design.

++

Master

Suddenly, I have a new prayer.

Send me a master, please.

The baby you sent is everything.

Is teaching, yes.

But I can grow more, harder.

Give, so as to become.

Be humble, like you said.

Write it all down, for someone else.

Feel smaller, talk smaller.

Life is the speech inside my head, static.

I seek a changed phrase, a living word.

Unjudging and massive, gentle at night.

An open face to greet those you send, hi.

Hi, I pray.

Send me a master, amen.