Death Fiesta by Chuka Susan Chesney

In the attic of your house,
we held a Camelot party.
Your brother wore a tunic,
but he didn’t stay long.
The dishwasher was broken,
bar shelves stocked.
Your parents downstairs,
sipping Gallo in the den.
All of us were toking on the attic floor,
boys clad in tights, girls in medieval gowns.
Heard your mother’s voice
calling from below,
“We bought you champagne from the liquor store.
There are stacks of Dixie cups
and a platter of Doritos.”
We poured bubbly into flowered cups
on the kitchen countertop.
I started baking cookies,
but later I forgot.
Your mother smelled
burnt chocolate emanating from the oven.
She lambasted me,
but I dozed unaware
on the ticking-covered mattress
next to Guinevere.
We were lying in the closet
as we spun Pet Sounds.
God only knows if
someone flipped the record.
Your father lawyered downstairs,
sipped wine on his sofa
from a mouthblown glass.
Your mother clambered off
to her four poster bed.
In the morning she found him,
his forehead like cold duck.
We must have fallen asleep just before he died.
Someone headed for the bathroom at 2 am
saw him slumped against a pillow
with a dossier on his lap,
a sharpened pencil balanced over one ear.
There was a wake at your house a few days later,
pinot noir served at the bar,
and your mother simmered gumbo
with dirty rice and beans.
I wore my kimono
on the covered patio,
listening to Queen
and Nat King Cole.
You reposed in your caftan
on the leafy chaise lounge
next to the deep end
of infinity pool.

Chuka Susan Chesney is an artist and a poet. Her poems, art, and/or flash fiction have been published in Peacock Journal, Inklette, New England Review, Compose, Picaroon, and Lummox. Chesney’s paintings and collages have been in exhibitions and galleries across the United States.