Lew Watts and Charles Trumbull

Men, Spreading

Apart from size, we’re remarkably similar, though we do have our creative differences – my love of assonance to yours of alliteration, an obsession with rework versus first-out spontaneity. But we’re always on time at the bookstore for our monthly coffee, and we’re always polite – today, we spend ten minutes talking families and the weather before the typed sheets appear and are exchanged.

I’ll go first. I pick up on how your early life informs your work. A childhood in Wales is very exotic to this high-desert rustic from the American Southwest. Shades of Dylan Thomas or the sobriety of an eisteddfodd. Why, then, can’t I resist circling unfamiliar expressions in your poems and scrawling “Britishism” in the margin?

Interrupting is always a gamble, but I know you can’t resist a new word. “Bollocks,” I say. “Easy, ‘testicles’ or ‘nonsense,’” you reply in your Merriam-Webster voice. “And ‘the dog’s bollocks’?” I savor this rare victory. “It means the opposite, Charlie – ‘brilliant’ or ‘outstanding,’ ‘the bee’s knees.’”

You propose that we try to write something together. “How about a collaborative haibun? One of us would start with a short piece of prose, and we’d each respond – separately, without seeing the other’s work – with a haiku. Then the other would do another bit of prose, and we’d go on like that.” “For how long?” “Well, till we’re done.”

“Okay, let’s suck it and see,” I say. As you choke on a large sultana, two women at an adjacent table scrape their chairs further away. You clear your throat, and the voice returns. “That’s the problem – the older I get, the more I need to masticate.” Scrape, scrape, mutter, mutter.

Marked-up sheets of haiku are scattered all over the café table. I crunch up our outtakes into balls and lob them into the wastebasket. ”Two outa three ain’t bad. So, are we ready to move on this, or do we need to digest it some more?” Wordlessly, you click your pen closed and make a javelin-like gesture through the air.