John MacNeill Miller

A Technique for Recording

They gather the birds with gloved hands.
A snap of latex and the brittle tibias
pinch in their pudgy fingers,
the world’s thinnest cigarettes.

Doors swing open. Subjects
escape to the isolation
of individual housing and land
on darkness, sponges
bog-soft with ink.

There is no music. Nothing sings
as the technician looks up beaming
a star-studded replica of the heavens
overhead, late summer pasted to a dome.

(The sky they saw was fake.
But what is mind if not the bent
to be moved by another’s deceit,
to see in manmade pinpricks
something celestial, an imitation
that might orient us?)

Pulse and wings flutter.
The animals scramble
homeward all evening.
Each abortive leap
leaves black scratches
across paper that holds them
hostage, lines meant to outlive
these hard-beating hearts.

(The birds alone were real.
They are dead now, every one
irrecoverable as the sights
our eyes follow at night,
the desires spoken only
in the mascara hieroglyphics
you scribble into the pillowcase.)

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John MacNeill Miller teaches about literature, animals and the environment at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming at Peatsmoke, Flyway, About Place Journal and other venues.