it's four o'clock in the morning, and I'm still sitting at the machine
with pixels the size of pushpin heads blown up on my screen
I am looking for the ones that turned bemused into sublime
looking deep within this image for the part that transcends time
but if the key to this immortal inch is really somewhere here
then this program cannot make it appear
 
in the catalog of canons blessed they're all from long ago
why should a single patient gesture preserve a woman we don't know?
has no artist since then rendered an enigma 2D?
why bother painting if the best was done in 1503?
and as this tiny, fading portrait leads another class to Art
I am reaching for my trackball to do my part
 
I am taking out the corner with a single cursor flick
I'll replace it with a scar that touches the edges of her lips
I am switching out the background for a busy summer street
she is squirming in the passers' gazes and sweating in the heat
and the artist is impatient to get to the next Lord's wife in line
and he knows the mouth's not right, but he says it's fine
 
and when the last trace goes I click once upon Erase
and finally lay to rest her sad museum-tortured face
with a blank white file before me, and the wrecked smile 0s and 1s
I am finally free of her damning glance, and as dawn comes I've begun
to fill in the space in the body of work that my editing cleared out
because a frame and a laser-guarded wall's not art