Notes on Devotion

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.