4 Little Love Story-Poems by Carol Novack
Relations
Auntie was prone to say: “Cheese is best when sliced thin just like life.” She always bit off a lot of less than she could chew and avoided more than a mot of mirth, even with dessert and a spot of port. “Take little and relish it, and you will be sufficient. But that’s just my opinion.”
When I was little, I ate too fast and choked at birthday parties. Then I grew up a little and married the first man who’d overcome me, big with an eloquent tongue. I nearly lost my breath till death might do us part.
At Auntie’s funeral, a weeping man hugged me so brutally he caught my breath. He was the man called Happy Henry Auntie had left at the altar. As the attendees gasped, Auntie reversed herself with deliberation and panache, floating down the aisle towards the door. “So sorry, I made a little mistake,” she spoke politely, waving her white-gloved hands.
His Heart
Carla wore his heart under her sleeve. The heart he’d carved said “Carla and Carl forever,” as if her arm were a tree he’d planted on his property. An arrow with angel wings pierced the dead center of the heart, “a darling, thoughtful touch,” she exclaimed, turning as red as the heart’s aorta. When Carl left for Majorca with Mabel, the wings turned black and blue.
Nostalgia
Short, plump Lili longed for the man on the other side of the square, the one who sat on a bench reading “Sonnets to Orpheus.” Everything about him was grand and aquiline. Atop the man’s mane of white hair perched a black beret. A black tie always relaxed on his lavender silk shirts; he seemed to have a menagerie of them. Was he always going to a Ball?
The man she called “the one” reminded Lili of what she wished to remember of her childhood: a huckleberry sundae with dark chocolate chips. She wondered what color his eyes were. She was an expressionist who loved Kandinsky.
Lili took to wearing a black hat to cover her dull gray hair and a long black silk scarf to adorn her parade of lavender blouses. She started to make a habit of walking by him, winking her hips. Then she added an accessory, a book of poems by Rilke that poked ostentatiously from her mini-tote bag. Lili did this for weeks, months, years, oh what is time? But he never even glanced her way. He was too busy mouthing poems, looked as though he was eating them. Yet he was ever looking up at the sky, into the sun, with his eyes closed. Lili tried wearing spiked heels to create noises to awaken him from his Rilkean reveries. Nada. Niet. Rien du tout. She tried tripping and ripped her purple stockings on several occasions. Nada. Niet. Rien du tout.
One day, Lili set up an easel in front of the patisserie opposite “the one’s” bench. She brought her most luxurious colors and began to paint him. A crowd soon gathered to exclaim their praises in most colorful words. When the crowd dispersed, “the one” walked cautiously up to the painting and asked Lili if he could suggest a “minor touchup.” “Although I cannot see, I can smell the color you used for my eyes,” he said. “They are in fact absent of color, but perhaps I should say they were, as you’ve made them blush. I can feel you are a warm woman of wit and refinement, the one I’ve awaited to take to the Ball.”
And so they went and that was the beginning.
Quantum Physics
Jim and Tim met at The Met. They were scrutinizing a painting of a woman pouting at herself in a mirror as she brushed her exuberant golden hair. Jim looked at Tim and saw Tim as the person he’d always wanted to see in his own mirror, someone who reminded him of himself but substantially more than himself. Tim had the same experience. They looked at one another as though through a magical looking glass and turned instantly into a union: the seeing and the seen, the seen and the seeing. Their tastes were naturally similar, from escargots to crème brulee, Marisot to Klee, and they frequently uttered the same words in unison with glee.
Jim had a wife named Adele, and Tim, a live-in partner named Estelle. Adele and Estelle took back seats to Jim and Tim and had nothing to say to one another, though they frequently rolled their eyes at each other and yawned in empathy. After a while the couple outings lost Estelle, who disappeared, maybe with a man named Marvin she’d met at Tango Tuesdays. Adele, a clinical psychologist, declared Jim guilty of a parasitic form of narcissism that would be his undoing. He returned the diagnosis, with one swift, impulsive stroke, as people are wont to do when they’re rightfully attacked. So Adele left with the child and three cats and Tim moved in with Jim.
Tim and Jim began to grow old together. Eventually with aging came forgetfulness, fuzziness, cataracts and grumpiness. They peered into one another’s mirrors and spat on the glass but their images failed to improve and became cloudier. Teeth turned yellow and dropped out, skin turned the color of ancient bones, and eyes paled. The men threw their mirrors away. But even without the mirrors, Tim reminded Jim of Jim as substantially less than himself and Jim reminded Tim of Tim as substantially less than himself and so they became disgusted and hopeless and decided to unmeet. Tim found a woman named Esme who was more than he’d imagined, and Jim found his son Jimbo a passable portrait painter.