$10,000 Ana María Caballero delivers a multifaceted rendition of self in the performative poem Waiting Room (2024). Tying into her own strong spoken-word history and poetry’s tradition of orality, Caballero performs her verse on screen, using her own body to speak the language of the poem, exploring how her physicality ties to her verse in this form for the first time. Her text’s narrative twists with the vicissitudes of caretaking. The intersecting Spanish, translating to “You, Me, Ours”, is a play on words that shifts the speaker’s intent. The formal division in Waiting Room prompts us to question the permeable boundaries between caring for ourselves and caring for others. Waiting Room is from Caballero’s prize-winning, forthcoming book Mammal. The collector will receive a signed print of the poem. Photography by Luis Gaspar.