COLLABORATIONISTS

Poems from "HOT TEA FREELANCE"

a collaborative chapbook by Matthew Wascovich, Kimberly Nichols, and Deborah Staab

PAPER CLIP TEA CUP

Hola
Paper clip tea cup
Long stem
And ceramic
Steam
Sips
Warm teeth
Cool lips
And dim sum tea
Sugared
Sweet
Swill
Crusade
Set down
Spilling
Slightly
Into
My
Paper
Saucer
 

—Wascovich & Staab

TURTLE AND WHITE DICE

Slowly tip
Toe through
New York
University
I caught you
On your ear
Tearing apart
Another page

Of cupped dice
And communicating turtles
The bones
Turned over
In your hands
While
Nina Simone
Sang deeply
Of sugar in her bowl
And you put
One more scoop
In my tortoiseshell tea
 

—Wascovich & Staab

FILM AROUND THE COLLAR

Countless prayers
Knees burning
And hell
At a stone's throw

Father you have
Been busted
The BBC reports
Of world wide scandal
As you handle
Inappropriate
The film around
Your collar
Father you have
Been busted

Count on your
Prayers
That burn
And smoke
Like Cain's
Below the horizon
 

—Wascovich & Staab

ALL THAT BINDS

He's got chops
To work on
Fingers
Stretched
And callused
Music linking
Thoughts
Pell-mell
Between words
And sound:
High pitch notes
Float and bloat
All that binds
Is falling and failing
Blondes have overtaken
Browns
In a color coup
Low night that ends
Amending the
Adhesive tape
 

—Wascovich & Staab

ON COLLABORATION
   by Kimberly Nichols

The string theory. The string theory is something that Matthew Wascovich and I have been discussing in depth for a while now. The idea of working off of personal intuition in order to make connections to web together a whole.

Matt and I met on-line through DIY networking. We read each other's work, founded a mutual admiration society and decided to mushroom rather than conquer. We found, and I have found, that the internet literary community is much more free and loose than normal print boundaries. People are more accessible here. Everyone gets their email.

We decided to start strings everywhere and to see what became of those strings. We found Deborah Staab when she submitted a poem to me for 3AM Magazine, a global on-line zine where Matt and I maintain editorships. We liked her voice, felt she had common ground and Matt corresponded with her for a while before deciding that we would all work mutually well together. He sent us templates for the haikus and it went from there as he remained the ringmaster and organizer of our words.

The thing I like most about collaboration is that you have these separate people, separate entities and voices, and when you merge them a whole new identity is created as a sum of its parts.

By collaborating behind pixels, with words struck out in the middle of night or early morning on keyboards, we each put personal pieces of our moods, our lives into each haiku, yet we still managed to maintain that elusive element of originality.

TWELVE COLLABORATIONAL HAIKU

today i love you
swimming inside of me, a
hot electric bruise

pulsating proudly
temple hell, she is waiting
sanctuary bitch

anxious lettering
razor blue line dissection
decipher code, bow

dirty dynamics
at one hundred and ninth street
handcuff the vixen

all day his beached cock
which one will it be this time
masturbation key

add to cart, hasty
my portobello beauty
blue black butterfly

woo the "y" spiral
you hunting for zen alone
accepting the boys

shimmy for me, sweet
my tongue through your lace; wet spout
last night in tank top

no reply to hide
hot guilt glittering your hips
i have forgotten

first communion dress
way things lay, the way things play
please forgive my sins

rolling thunder mask
her skin tone loose, pampered flesh
fighting with the dead

drunk, sweating, and spent
distorted, horny and wry
send message and sleep

—Wascovich, Nichols & Staab

Deborah Staab is a graduate of New York University who currently resides in Queens, NY. She has worked on independent films and commercials in varying capacities including prop master and art director. Paying the bills while finding time to write poetry has also had her working as a waitress, a hotel clerk, and most recently an editor and writer on a magazine, and a contributing editor at www.3ammagazine.com. This is her first collaboration.

Matthew Wascovich is a Cleveland-based poet and musician. Matthew's book of poems, Leo in the Garbage Can, will be published in late summer of 2002 by Slow Toe Publications. He edits Flat Bike & Banged Head and is a contributing editor at www.3ammagazine.com.

Kimberly Nichols is a freelance writer living in a large desert bowl where the wind whips feverishly on Saturday mornings. Her work has appeared in Feminista, Alternative Arts & Literature, 3 AM Magazine, Small Spiral Notebook and Fin De Siecle. She is a film reviewer for Web Del Sol and a contributing editor at www.3ammagazine.com. Her Diary of a Californicator appears at 3AM monthly.