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      March 18, 2024Two PintsLew Watts, Roberta Beary

      fireside rug
      wishing the dog
      would take me
       
      Six years it was, sleeping on couches. Waiting for Mam to get better. Every aunt took a turn. And every uncle.
       
      earliest sketchbook
      red running
      off his face
       
      Sounds grand. Not like at ours. No one’s touching his balls, Gramps would scream, after one too many. Granny chopping the veggies with a vengeance. We kids turned up the TV but couldn’t stop staring. At their collie, humping the loveseat.
       
      school project
      the futile search
      for scissors
       
      Huh! Never had a dog. Had a rat once. Thought it was a boy. One of my cousins dissected it. Said it was a girl. That she could tell ’cos it didn’t cry.
       
      upping the ante
      after doctors and nurses …
      first switchblade
       
      That’s nothing. Found a photo of Da in a shoebox. Him in his uniform holding it glued to his shoulder. That little smile. A badge for marksmanship, he said. As he pointed his rifle at the boyfriend.
       
      goth makeup
      blending in
      the bruises
       
      Bruises? You were lucky. My whole body was a bruise. And knees were always red-raw. Had to lick the driveway clean. Whenever they let me out. The only unscarred skin I saw was through a keyhole.
       
      eyeball to eyeball
      the one-upmanship
      of burst blood vessels

      from #83 – Collaboration

      Roberta Beary & Lew Watts

      “Lew and I have worked together in the past (we are co-authors, with Rich Youmans, of Haibun: A Writer’s Guide), but we have never written a haibun together. Traditionally, linked haibun involve alternating couplets of prose and haiku, where each prose sections links to but shifts away from the preceding haiku. Since we have both written extensively about our difficult childhoods, we had the idea of each of us writing alternating couplets that would escalate in gruesome absurdity; a kind of parody of ourselves. Those aficionados of Monty Python may recognize elements of their famous sketch, ‘The Four Yorkshiremen.’”

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