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BIRD POO ON THE LAWN CHAIR

by Antoine Bargel

On the cracked, white plastic by the cracked, white plastic table (dirty white, dirty white, streaks of greenish water white),

on the crisscrossed rattan on the marble terrace by the pool – which is lagoon blue with a tiny umbrella on top, thank you very much, and belongs to my parents not to me, as I don’t care about money. We were having a party, you know a small party

it was after my uncle’s funeral, her dress was black and right away I saw the white smudge on her back as she leaned forward to refill her plastic cup of Grazia wine, and wondered if I should tell her

with just a few hundred friends by the cocktail colored pool, DJ blasting gangsta pop, booties shaking, big dicks swinging and me, the King of All Creation, snorting coke off my mother’s Italian lawn chairs

but she was visibly upset already.

But she was visibly upset already when she got there and I don’t think I’m to blame for that, not as much as she is for distracting me at such a sensitive time,

she met my gaze and it was clear that she’d been crying but recently, although I hadn’t known until that day that she was friends with my uncle, as to me

to the extent that I kept going along what I perceived as a continuous white line, stopping only when something sticky heavy warm got lodged deep inside my right nostril

she was Ms. Patterson from 10th grade, a busty, jovial and too young to be true math teacher, who had inspired many pubescent activities on the bunk of my mezzanine desk, while below lay neglected the homework by her assigned

and I froze.

And I froze when she now rested her hand on mine and whispered, ‘you want to take a look inside his trailer?’ and I said yes, I would and

and I froze again when the doctor said the word ‘cryptococcus’, later as I was reclining on her exam table, although its meaning is cryptic the word is quite scary, wouldn’t you agree and

afterward she told me to pull out before, and I did and squirted all over the back of her black dress, as she bent panting over the red Formica table top,

afterward I cried as she explained what meningitis is, and told me that I was lucky since with appropriate treatment, the death-rate is only about 10%, as opposed to 100% without

large, white, oyster-like expressions of delight.

And my mother cried also.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Antoine Bargel writes poetry and fiction in English and French. His stories have been published in Easy Street, Jellyfish Review, Harpang, and elsewhere. His first novel, Ma vie parfaite, is currently being translated into English. He has a Ph.D. in Romance Languages from the University of Oregon, and has translated over 30 novels from English to French. His personal website is https://antoinebargel.com

Image created on Stable Diffusion