DEMON  

Why is a woman not born a bird?  

SISTER  

In the chapel, a sister is waiting  

to greet you.  

DEMON  

Her hands are not the hands of  

saints, they are bird claws.  

SISTER  

Yes, she is the only girl in the  

world who grew up to be an adult bird.  

DEMON  

When a group of women stands  

together, what is it that makes one of them  want to sing? arms wide-flapping 

and feet clapping stone? 

SISTER  

If only you’d look at the  

crowd which forms around you. 

We all wish to assure you of heaven.  

DEMON  

But all along, among people, my  

exhortation has only ever been:  

be as good as a bird, as happy as a bird.  

SISTER  

A prayer isn’t a birdcall: it is a ringing  

bell, a poem landing 

on the ears of a cactus.  

DEMON  

Even still, 

a woman with a beast in her belly  

must always be hungry. 

 

SISTER  

And hungry we sing Hosanna  

when we rip from our prayer clothes.  Hosanna, we are birds underneath.  

Hands climbing in prayer with wing  

as if made of it.  

DEMON  

No woman, even if she tried her  

whole life, could ever sound  

as beautiful as a bird can.  

SISTER  

Two women can come close.  

DEMON  

Even still, 

the pigs in the churchyard   

wait for you.  

SISTER  

It is true that the gospels say the  

demons begged Jesus: “Send us among the pigs;  allow us to go into them.”  

DEMON  

You know if you ask an evil  

to leave,  

something worse may take its place.  

SISTER  

If even one woman who lives after me  

finds honest love,  

then all of this is worth it.  

DEMON  

Your heart will not be the castle you  

wanted and prayed for.  

SISTER  

As long as I hear my sisters  

singing, any place can be my castle. 

 

. . .  

Oh, but I will miss them.  

My heart is drawn to them now as a refuge,  as the bright bird that sings back.