Digital Dust

By Pattie Palmer-Baker

The agent sifts digital dust,
not like stardust sprinkled
on profound black,
instead gray-brown specks
leaking out of ATM machines,
trickling from laptops,
dribbling out of phones.

He shapes the particles
into a digital fingerprint,
blots out truth messy with color,
paints the grooves black and white.

When the wind blows
through a Sitka Spruce,
he hears the whisper As-salam alaykum.
He whips the gun
from the back of his waistband
and shoots the words.
He doesn’t know they mean
peace be upon you.

Pattie Palmer-Baker is a Portland, Oregon artist and poet. Over the years of exhibiting her artwork—a combination of paste paper collages with her poems in calligraphic form—she discovered that most people, despite what they may believe, do like poetry; in fact many liked the poems better than the visual art. She now concentrates on writing, both poetry and personal essays. Visit her website.

Reading recommendation: Kohl & Chalk: poems by Shadab Zeest Hashmi