2. Football Hero

He persists in returning to the field. Ever since the story of his third marriage ended, he's been looking for the Prom Queen. When he approaches the players, the coaches call him predator, old fag. The mothers will throw their lawyers at him, thinking unspeakable things. He only wants to dance and play in the Queen's white cotton panties. She demanded he eat no more than one pomegranate seed a day till his helmet became a tourniquet and his shoulder pads gave him backaches. All those years, the work didn't work; in the end he couldn't catch the tires rolling along assembly lines, tires smelling of road-kill, his third wife's suffocating perfume. On his custody day, he leads his daughter to the arena of the football heroes. When she rolls her eyes, oh daddy, he takes her to the shore, watches ocean liners evaporate in fog while she hugs her cell phone to her ear, speaks awesome whatever to her tennis star. There is nothing between the lapsed football hero and the sea, nothing to keep him from searching for his Queen under her waves.


3. Ebbing

There are no boats riding the fog in a dead wind. Turning toward you, I notice thin strands of fresh blond hair in your teeth. Still asleep, with lids fluttering, you are once again dreaming of the Prom Queen. You with your whale belly float while I fill your breakfast bowl with fruits from the garden and hide nuts and bitter seeds inside of them, hoping your teeth will fall out. Then you will abandon the tennis courts and forget her. The Queen is now wizened and waned with dusty silver mouse hair and breasts like racquets. Though there are times I don't want to catch you, there is no one else and you know I'm afraid of water.

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Civil War

One night when she was tipsy from moonshine she mistook him for her bed.

A most succulent derriere, said he.  She answered, Dear pillow.

At first, they spun like ballet dancers on a mirror and he would catch her whenever she lost her balance.  The season was delirious and he didn't mind her mother.  In homage to nostalgia, sensible Mother drugged them with goose with apple mushroom dumplings till their cheeks bloomed.

They knew how to be alone while together and together while alone, she and he. For each, there was no other.  He knew when to speak words she craved: crème brulee and butternut squash. She knew where to find his vision when his eyes were cloudy with sour milk.  He named her Precarious; she named him Invincible.  They knew their places on the map of their needs; they planted an embryo, mistaking need for desire.

All was well and good until Dark Red ran against Light Blue, knocking Blue over like a bowling pin.  For months she wept for dying children and slaughtered animals, wrung her hands till they were dry, refused his insistent body in the dark. Armageddon approaches like a herd of angry monoliths, she would whisper, Prepare!  But don't let them know that we know they're almost here!  There are ears in the chandeliers!

He would call her Timid Blueberry, Hormonal Hothead; she would call him Pugnacious Marmalade, Bitter Prozac.

The urge inside her stopped growing and one day he didn't come home. He is working for Red, she said to Mother.  They were on the roof, folding clothes, their voices competing with the battle cries of planes. The stones are coming.  Can't you hear them, Mother?

There, there, cooed Mother, it is only the planes.

Navy Blue ran against Dark Red and Red fled to Elba.

The man returned to find that his house was ashes and there were no signs.  Mother said the monoliths had come and gone, leaving a trail of cemeteries. Why didn't you do something? she accused.  He replied: How was I to know?

The man thought: how lucky I am that my seed died inside of her sloppy womb.

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Dance Baby, Dance first appeared in The Salt River Review

Civil War first appeared in 5-Trope.  It will also be included in the anthology

Online Writing: The Best of the First Years, coming out early in 2008

Carol Novack is a lapsed criminal defense & constitutional lawyer with an MSW. Her writings will be found in many print publications. She publishes and edits Mad Hatters' Review & teaches lyrical fiction writing. She is also presently co-editing an anthology. You can visit Carol at her blog or at The Mad Hatters Review.  A review of Carol's C.D., Inventions I: Fictions, Fusions & Poems,   by Cicily Janus, can be read at Eclectica Magazine.  Our review of the same work
appeared here previously with an interview Carol did for The Guild of Outsider Writers.

Last update : 22-12-2007 05:58

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