television & birds in the walls of a dead house

my brothers & i take 
vows of silence for a year--
learn to catch our voices before
they leave our mouths like 
stray moths. the birds aren't talking
to each other they're talking
to God & God has better songs.
he has his headphones in.
i open my mouth & only fog pours out
a great clouds sulking all through 
the streets. my brothers & i compare teeth 
& compare the shapes of our hands
pressing fingers to fingers.
some of us have long hands meant for
plucking root vegetables from
the dirt. there's a television 
dying in the walls of the house
& none of us have the tools to free it.
the television feeds us muffled headlines
& we can tell there's been another shooting
somewhere & we can tell someone is angry 
& someone is scared & their voices 
sound only like birds in the walls 
of the house. i want to tell my brothers 
i hate the news but we can't speak 
not for the rest of this year so
instead i find them in their rooms
& press my hands to their backs as if 
to tell them we both have bodies 
full of this silence. the silence buzzes 
in each beam. the silence perches 
in windows--is contagious & has plumage.
it's really for the best though & 
i start to forget how the mouth should move
to make words. i wake up
with a beak--my brothers all have 
different styles. mine resembles 
a common blue jay & there's cardinals 
& plovers & hawks. the TV warns us 
about screw drivers & how easily they can
punch holes through a house. the TV warns us
about birds & how easily a human can decide
they no longer want to have a tongue.
my tongue wriggles in the dirt outside
with the others. our silence has a temperature
our silence has weight like foot prints 
in mud. our silence has long hair that's
easily combed. our silence has hairy legs 
& walks far away from the herd. i had something
to tell them but i forgot so i did 
what i always do & i came & laid down
in the same bed with them all. i clapped my hands 
to get their attention & we pressed hands together.
some of them disprove of clapping, they think
that counts as speech too. i think 
i would die if i couldn't at least
do that.