Hat Tricks by Thad DeVassie

The bar banter is reaching a fever pitch, keeping Kirby the barkeep on his toes, by his taps. Miguel is making the case for Ronaldo, not Messi, as the all-time hat trick leader to his middle-aged mates and pick-up club comrades. Francois pleads that hockey hat tricks are harder to come by than soccer, with Gretzky netting more goals than Ronaldo and Messi combined, a sliver of fake new that is promptly disproven. Kirby keeps sliding pints between the pipes of arms along the high-gloss bar, notching a few bar-back hat tricks of his own. But leave it to Evelyn, the pick-up club’s bullish center back and resident contrarian to suggest that the hat trick leader doesn’t need to bag three goals, but four words, on a red ball cap while scoring electoral votes. It’s an ugly quip from a rather nasty woman. Francois, willing to forfeit some minutes, lunges with disregard of the red card to engage in a skirmish with their brutish defender, the anchor of the back line. But the club has the votes, and while her conduct is not quite an impeachable offense, they place all subsequent rounds on Evelyn’s tab, putting Kirby on notice as he’s the one about to set the record straight on his beer-slinging scorecard. 

Thad DeVassie is a lifelong Ohioan who writes and paints from the outskirts of Columbus. A finalist for the 2020 James Tate Poetry Prize, his work has appeared in journals such as New York Quarterly, Poetry East, Spelk, Lunate, and Ghost City Review, among many others. His chapbook, THIS SIDE OF UTOPIA, is forthcoming from Cervena Barva Press