Pattie Palmer-Baker poet – Writers Resist

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

Peace Dreams

By Pattie Palmer-Baker

Teacher:

Stop hissing orders.
Streamline your body into a fish shape,
float with your students in a sound-stilled ocean,
flash love notes with your sequined eyes.

Stockbroker:

See the half-dressed man crumpled
on the trash-littered sidewalk?
Brake your black Mercedes, carry him to your car,
rest him on the leather backseat beneath a cashmere blanket.

Biker:

Push away the tequila shot,
speed across town to the crumbling care center.
Listen all day, into the night
to you father’s war stories
until you both fall asleep, heads touching.

President:

Lie down on half-mown grass
with all the ISIS leaders of the world.
Take turns guessing the shapes of the clouds.
Push ivory feathers out of your pores

longer than the shine of the moon.

………………………………………….

Pattie Palmer-Baker is a Portland OR 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 poetry and personal essays.

Reading recommendation: Shattering the Stereotypes: Muslim Women Speak Out, edited by Fawzia Afzal-Khan.