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.