Framed-Art Tour, Exhibit 17

 

 

Now how, you wonder, did I get him? That duck?

I needed animals, you see, for this one wall in the house, and my sister’s duck just struck me as right. Orange feet, orange bill, the stuck-out barrel chest like all the other ducks’ in the world.

I don’t think I asked my sister for the duck and she said no. This has happened—I’ll want this or that small masterpiece of hers and she’ll act all possessive, harden her heart. No, she’ll say, she wants it. But here, I just took the picture. This was some months ago. Amid the cats on her Instagram, the sheep, the women’s legs and other body parts, the seashores, the fields, the flowers, there before me stood the duck.

I maybe already had the mat—I’m not sure. I taped my photo to the back, and that easy, I had me a piece of fine art.

The one thing I did wrong, terribly wrong, was not think to slide the cursor on my screen out of view. Dumb dumb. Now it sits unchased off the duck’s chest feathers, unswatted, like a gnat, or a bedbug.

 

P.S. He’s a good duck. Ducks are good. That orange might’ve had you confused. Rest assured I would never hang up any quacking, vain, puffed-chested man ducks with orange skin on my animals wall. No man gooses either, not the vicious, raving-mad kind.