Summer Lee © 2004 All Rights Reserved

Bitmap

The image staggers in
at the bottom of the screen.
Pixels stack upwards,

a map of the world scrolling
down a blackboard, ice caps,
pampas and capes

tugged into view.
Pajama legs
bend like flannel peninsulas.

Snap-button cities.
The tiny archipelago
of the right hand.

A mother’s arm
freckled with olive spangles.
Baby’s left hand knots

a loose fist. Soon
her fingers will curl
a pink and hungry terror.

Her dream-dotted eyes
will drop their blank
and satisfied shine,

her Puritan baby cap
will abandon the brain
to its colony of bone.

Tom Daley
Copyright © 2004

Tom Daley is a machinist living and working in the Boston area. His poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Salamander, Archipelago, Shampoo, Yemassee, Perihelion, Pemmican and can we have our ball back? He leads a poetry writing workshop at the Boston Center for Adult Education.

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