Bastards

How can you hate birds? -Ada Limón

They fly tiredless, uneven,

equal to nothing but each other,

parallel to God—that’s it,

they’re too close.

They can hear God and we can’t,

is that it? That their wings

block the skies so our prayers

sound like static? Crackles of wants.

So much feather to plow through.

And they’re loud, too. All that singing

outshouts ours, so our choirs

are useless. No, there’s no point

in singing if God can’t hear us,

our roasted lips ever-trying

to chirp harder than those birds.

Our words muddle, our priests

buy boomboxes. Those bastards.

Should we call them bastards?

They’re eating up all our confessions

and shitting them right back down onto us,

and here we are, breathing,

our dumb mouths wide open.