from THE BIRD ARTIST
Begin with screws and wires. The song is in the slide of metal gears,
the whisper of friction where the song lives, deep in the belly of the beast.
Out east, we slept through winter, feeling out the dark, coldest corners
of the house only in the middle of the night. My sister swallowed a bird
that eventually killed her. Willed her onto mountainsides and train tracks.
No one could wrest it from her throat, though we tried. Plied her with honey
and milk and still, she whimpered all night beneath the covers. Her lovers
slipping in and out the window. If you tighten the gears, you can approximate
singing but only to the untrained ear. After all, we were listening to the wrong
animal, the wrong music. By June, everything rusted over and out of tune.
