I open the door to two young men teetering on Segways. “Hi, there. I’m Evan and this here is Bradley. You must be the queen of the house.”
“How’d ya guess?” I quip.
“You have that royal glow,” he says.
“I’m having a hot flash,” I say.
Bradley snickers and Evan cuts him a look. “Well, anyway, I’ll bet you have some pests you’d like to get rid of.”
I consider another snide remark, but figure it would demote me from queen status. “Not really. It’s a new house. We just moved in a couple months ago.”
“No ants? termites? Ah-ha,” he says, pointing to a spider on the porch. “How about that guy?”
“That’s my friend, Herman. He is a very well-mannered guest.”
Bradley snickers again, and after a few seconds pipes in. “Dude, I don’t think she’s in our target audience.”
eight limbs
shooed off
my patio
I jot a note
for next time
these webs we weave
Cheribun is a relatively new hybrid form combining prose with cherita; thus far, few have explored collaborative varieties. When Terri and I first discussed collaborative cheribun, we weren’t sure of the best way to construct the collaboration. On our first attempt, “Don’t Bug Me,” a prose-cherita split seemed sufficient for the piece. However, Terri suggested a more interlinked version where one person writes the first paragraph, followed by a cherita and second paragraph by the second person, followed by a final cherita written by the first person; thus, the collaborative form is sandwiched by authorship. “Zigzag” was our first attempt at this interlinked collaborative cheribun, but we suspect many collaborative variations of cheribun could exist. Braided and French-braided varieties of cheribun provide ideal targets for future collaboration (as well as braided varieties of haibun!).
Bio: Terri L. French
Bio: Colleen M. Farrelly
