Pizza



Below, strangers mouthing each other’s nerve,
the drivers lead foot as the red light greens
and this truculent clutter of cars careens
away--roars
              surging traffic
                             and none of them see
two bickering ravens high over the street
perched side-by-side on the crossbar’s curve.

Across the road, all this a lone gull eyes
from his place atop another light, although,
on the rooftop of the fast-food pizza-to-go,
what the raven now holds had been his prize--
his half-slice of pizza sags over the bar.

Beside that raven, the second cowers,
wings quivering in submission, as its bill
snakessidewaysgrabs at the held swill
(so succulent) above the
                             surging traffic’s
                                                 roar--
raven, gull, raven, though everyone knows
their arguments, the mouths that gape and close,
like ours, evermore squawking at strangers.

                        -- Jess Morton