Notes on Devotion
2 Minutes Read Time
A man by the name of Skinner becomes famous
for keeping caged
pigeons, whom his clock feeds or starves
at random. Their tiny twitching heads exaggerate until
one bird swings its weight like a pendulum;
one turns counterclockwise three times;
one aims its beak to the corner and sings, My love
let me break, which has nothing to do with the cage.
The point is, the pigeons
invented their own religion. Aimed litanies
at an empty sky until something
broke, and something
was mechanical.
I still hold the shape of his skull to my sleeping chest
and call his name
over and over
to the wrong man. Though the manna that fell was nothing
but accident, it conditioned the birds to aim weapons.
The accuracy with which they pecked the homing radar
was unswayed by Skinner's pistols
or pressure chambers—the centrifugal loop that swung their bird-bones
broken, until their hearts
were locked in place.
If you feel pressure on the neck, remember—lockets
used to be a sign of mourning, stuffed
with hair or cutouts of a lover's eyes. I've seen love
pecked to death and the gods
sculpted from that accident. I've aimed
my head to the corners of the sky and opened
my mouth so wide, I've thought
my beak would break. Like clockwork
I coo
Let me break
my love, and skin the feathers
from that wound. Religion requires ritual:
to do the same thing over
and over
despite pressure in the skull, or a pistol to the breast, but I still remember
my own young Sunday. The hollow sanctuary,
where behind the preacher's head
a bird flew into the window over
and over, and we
just kept singing.
Read more from Issue 20.1.
