by Nancy Krygowski
Today’s reading: how to tell a female
from a male pigeon without
cutting it open.
Most of this
I already know having been
alive.
The male
is generally bigger
and blows himself up
bigger than he already is
and bigger still
when he’s feeling insecure
because his love
with her svelte beak
finds an empty peanut shell
beguiling.
Sexing a pigeon,
the article says, is difficult
and it’s okay
to trust my intuition.
Males bow big heads down
and scrape their tails on the ground
when they’ve behaved badly
or want to.
The women have given up talking
to the males because
what’s the point?
The male’s invisible ears
are too near its voice,
which it finds
beguiling.
The females listen
for the sounds of seeds falling
while calculating the best routes back
to the one-room nests
the men built for them
and their soon-to-be kids
ignoring the female’s desire
for alone time.
Alone, for the males,
is frightening.
Thankfully they like sitting on eggs.
An almost sure way
to sex a pigeon
is to watch it having sex.
The unbalanced one on top
is the male.
The one puzzling
over the last episode of Married
at First Sight is the woman.
Female pigeons have round eyes
and delicate necks.
They avoid drama
unless drama
is a hawk.
Then they flap loudly away
just like males.
Up next:
sexing the society
finch.
Nancy Krygowski is the author of The Woman in the Corner and Velocity, winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize. She teaches in Carlow University’s Madwomen in the Attic writing program and is Co-Editor of the Pitt Poetry Series and Pittsburgh Bureau Chief of the tiny newspaper, Tiny Day.