Scuffle
by Gabriel Rocha

Before the two dimensions of red and orange
the ringnecked pheasants scuffle in my bedroom
merciless. While I listen the circular ritual
over dried leaves and parched sunflowers,
they calculate their distressing bites. I don’t feel threatened
because they leave me alone. Erratic, dozens of them
snapping their long necks at each other
like wrists. Sometimes I think they growl,
chests low to the ground,
spinal cords inside the throats.

Basketweavers leave a trail of plastic fruit
on their way to work. Every day they take a shortcut
through my bedroom. I don’t feel trespassed
because they leave me alone.
They leave heavy, fake oranges, brown pears
like sweet potatoes. Grapes like little swollen feet.
An olive pregnant with an olive.

We don’t all seem to speak very much.
At night I use the curtains as blankets
and sleep against the window
while the pheasants get out of hand.
Sometimes a butterfly, one of those
with antennae and the torso of a woman
with no arms or legs, flies into the scuffle
and looses its wings.
Don’t have much to say about that.
Outside birds chirp like mechanical birds chirp.
Don’t have much to say about that either.

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