ilutiern

In the dusk-yellow sunshine of the desert, the morning wind is crackling like static over the sand. It breathes salt, breathes sore throats and raw skin against the red mountains. The crows are croaking again, low and harsh and rattling like the final breaths of a half-dead man. This man is alive. He crawls spidery and long-limbed against the dirt-rimed cliffs, lost now in a patch of purple shadow. Now here he is in the sunlight, new and watery, and his skin is red and peeling, and the snatches that have fallen off flutter to the dunes below like snow. This man is alive (alive for now) alive for the hot cruel scratch scratch of the sun on

Beware the grammar gangsters! The mafia of the literary underworld. They saunter into stanzas, Weapons concealed Under their trench coats Or in violin cases. They can make you talk, "With just a few well-placed speech marks," Leave you shouting! Where you should have whispered! And pulp your bold statements into quavering questions? They can, pepper, your, phrases with, commas, Or bring your piece to a dead. Full. Stop. They'll trap you (between brackets) As you - dash - to the exit. Then: punch a blunted colon Into the gut of your text Or worse; Force-feed you a poisonous semicolon, Then hack/slash your work to shreds. T

he was painfully shy, always stutter-tongue-tied when he tried to talk to people, when he tried to interact like a Normal Human Being. It wasn’t that he didn’t want friends, only that other people were scary big shadow things filled with potential for contempt, and they always seemed like blurry monsters when he wasn’t wearing his glasses. he never wore his glasses, except when he was huddled in the lonely corners colonized by dust, reading large books in forgotten languages. It was from one of these corners that he first caught a glimpse of Her, and she was the first person he had seen clearly in years. She was just a girl. S

I When the little girl woke up, she found cookies in her shoes. It was December 6, St. Nicholas Day, her parents told her.  That’s the day when Santa comes and takes your Christmas list and leaves you cookies if you were good, a switch if you were bad.  Santa left her cookies!  The little girl squealed in delight, in excitement. Do you want to try one, her mother asked.  The little girl put one in her mouth.  She chewed.  She swallowed.  She smiled.  It was the best thing she had ever eaten in her life. You can eat another one, her father said. &

Living with Attention Deficit Disorder (A.D.D.) Although I was nineteen before I was actually diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder (A.D.D.), I knew that something was preventing me from performing as well as I could on standardized tests and in essays.  Yes, those two areas were where I struggled most and still struggle most in my life.  I never scored very high on those standardized tests, but did well enough to escape much notice from those in education.  I also did not do too well on any sort of essays or long papers, but did well enough there to avoid much notice.  I never knew that I had something that was affecting my educational

She wrote me: This is the time of all things read; the time of books, clean hands, straw dogs, shared looks. This is the time that finds the time to settle down; to open that smile with enormous plans; to pound on metal rolled with rust; to lie when lovers lie, alone, quiet, in kitsch and style. She wrote me: Death for some is a careless cat, one that lacks a voice—and love— and never plays chess. But that is not my choice. You see, I prefer the quieter sort; the kind of death that stalks one through shapeless blur, a caress of trust and a lack of breath—now three, now two— a sweet bluff and a face that