María DeGuzmán

Fable

*The Warning*
Imagine yourself a night porter,
chin cradled in hand propped up by elbow
planted on an institution grey steel table
in a marble lobby whose walls, past midnight,
reflect warnings of things past & to come.
Pulling your chronovisor cap over your eyes
to cop a nap brings on more visions.

*Time Traveler*
Now you stand by a space capsule,
time-weary traveler amid smoke & mirrors,
destruction and chaos from the oilfields.
*Slow down, slow down.*
*Where are you going, anyway?*
Delivering mail from nowhere to the living
who are dead and just don’t know it yet.

*Book & Genie*
*Show them this.* Book by a window,
poetry mushrooming from it, collaborative reverie.
The still point begins to dance.
*When I come for you, will you relent?*
Go into that starry night
reflected in long rippling paths on dark waters,
and the dawn that follows …

*Open Ocean*
You lay your head down on the table,
close your eyes, slip from this consciousness,
permit yourself to be swept out to sea,
to where there is no shoreline and the lovers are gone,
where a tiny dinghy, an open boat, drifts on etheronic
waves made from Mediterranean blues
stretching out toward infinity.

*Woman with Light*
The light from the taper
she is holding
illuminates a fable

*Mind Flow*
flowing from nowhere, perhaps from your mind.

María DeGuzmán is a scholar, conceptual photographer, writer, and music composer / sound designer. Her photographic work has been exhibited at The Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston, MA, USA), Watershed Media Centre (Bristol, England), and Golden Belt Studios (Durham, NC, USA). She has published photography in Abstract Magazine, The Grief Diaries, Coffin Bell, Typehouse Literary Magazine, Map Literary, Two Hawks Quarterly, Harbor Review, The Halcyone, Gulf Stream Literary Magazine, Ponder Review, Alluvian, streetcake: a magazine of experimental writing, Galdrar of Tempered Runes Press, The Closed Eye Open, and Gone Lawn; creative nonfiction photo-text pieces Oyster River Pages, La Piccioletta Barca, and Tiny Seed Literary Journal; photo-text flash fiction in Oxford Magazine, Bombay Gin, Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices, and Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality and the Arts; photo prose poetry in Landlocked Magazine; visual poetry in TAB: The Journal of Poetry & Poetics and Roanoke Review (forthcoming); poetry in Empty Mirror; and short stories in Mandorla: New Writing from the Americas, Huizache: The Magazine of Latino Literature, Sinister Wisdom, Obelus Journal, and On the Run. Her SoundCloud website may be found at: https://soundcloud.com/mariadeguzman.