He Made the Pigeon
He made the Virgin from pigeon—choosing her
over quail, over chicken, over flamingo.
She remains quiet; the olfactory bulb of pigeon
much smaller than other songbirds.
Her muted cry of miracle birth
(having never felt what turtledoves feel)
sprung the savior. But she remained background,
cooing only to those who listen.
From egg the purest child came
not from iron cage, from the pigeon and
the dove brought the olive branch
while She resigned to squabble in the street.
He chose not dove, not peacock, not sparrow
for she pigeon is always pecking at the earth–she only sustains
what is already present, she does not create,
she does not sing while others flaunt feathers
or preach from tree branches.
And when wise pigeons go to die, they fly
to the horizon and fall, becoming again the earth,
returned by the apostates of ants. No artist paints the
Death of the Virgin, because doing so would give the pigeon a song.
Pigeons have Magnets
Pigeons have magnets for brains like my dad said I got rocks. We are
the social order of the most common chicken flock. It is instinctive for
pigeons to mate and fuck everything. Up in the tree tops we typically
take homeward direction shorty after release. Mother says we have no
compass sense. That electric charge that pulses through my body
makes the pigeon body course and recourse with a wingtip covering
the gap between my legs, I like it would make a good bikini bottom.
Pigeon Death
The pigeon dies in daylight. Death
and Bird can be understood
as one. Pigeon must fight reversing polarity and
Al Gore’s wind turbines. The death machines.
In Eastern Indonesia life
is represented by the flapping of the wing—the spirited mating
display of one pigeon is a brush of fate
Imagine being thwarted by the two small coils in your head
Once telling you to fly home when it was sunny
to live when it was sunny but
to otherwise be thrown off by 6 degrees when
the sun does not appear and
everything once oriented in now reversed
flap the wings once and it is light
flap them twice and it is dark.
Such is the fate of pigeon.
Evan Gorzeman’s work has appeared in The Literary Hatchet, Criterion, LA Miscellany, and elsewhere. He is currently an MFA candidate in fiction at Columbia University.
