Features

Sonnet no. 5

Why

New morning sun brings forth her warming rays
while dying leaves drift gently to the ground.
Approaching winter soon will dampen days,
when ice will hang from barren trees abound.
Korea’s changing beauty I have seen,
penned every scene for all the world to read.
I miss so much your sparkling eyes of green,
while for your love, my heart again will bleed.
The freezing snow will cover all that lives
I hope I will survive this daily fight.
A priest once said that Jesus Christ forgives,
though what I do, he could not see as right.
My helmet sits upon my weary head ─
My rifle, now replaces pencil lead.

David J Delaney
27/12/2009 ©

For my Uncle, Lawrence George Delaney, 1st Battalion RAR, who served in Korea.

In the Shadow of Ghosts

To all and sundry I hereby attest
when writing stories, I will pen my best
to literary heights I will aspire
and write like poets, those that I admire.

To stroll with Lawson under silver moon
and sit with Dennis in the early noon
ride with Morant along the Condamine
inspired by Parkes, my rhyme I will refine.

Then walk with Kendall, hear the bell birds song
stand with Ogilvie, view the rushing throng
watch Evans write his women of the west
read Boake, great poet and one of our best.

There’s Esson’s tribute to the shearer’s wife.
the convicts who sang their rum song of life
then Song of Australia was Carleton’s view
I hear Paterson, and that Geebung crew.

Verse caught the time, the man rode Snowys side
viewed Sydney town when ships moved with the tide
rode Cobb and Co. along a dusty track
traveled the bush, where some never came back.

All master poets, experts in this craft
read so many, I smiled, I cried, I laughed
published in many a books well read pages
their words are still resounding through the ages.

I’ll keep on writing well into the night
knowing one day, I’ll pen the metre right
the flow of my rhythm will be like a song
the beat will sound its perfect soft and strong.

With help from writers, present or the past
my writings' true perfection, I will grasp
when all’s left are my poems and my rhyme
I would love them remembered for all time.

By Wendy Strain

The sun spreads rosy light throughout the land
Creeping over dull gray concrete roads
Reaching out with bright determined hand
To wake the sleepers from cold abodes

The light grows stronger each passing hour
Insists sleeping eyes open to day
To see the beauty of field and flower
Before progress takes it all away

The cars are started in the early light
The workers progress to buildings dim
They lock themselves away from daytime’s sight
And feel they’re safe from warnings of the sin

Of warming gases and resources lost
They never see the fallout

By Meghan Morrow

WritersNewsWeekly recently spoke with Paul Nandzik, President of Red Tie Products. Red Tie Products, which include Grammar Matters T-shirts, is an eco-friendly company working toward promoting literacy while retaining an ethical means of production. With great moral standards and even greater senses of humor, the team behind Red Tie Products has worked diligently to create a fun and exciting way to experience literature.

WNW: Let us first start off by asking who you are. Who is the face (or faces) behind Red Tie Products?
Nandzik:There are many faces behind Red Tie Products, but by and large, I (Paul Nandzik) am the driving force behind the company. My titles include Founder and President, but “Brainfather” might be a more appropriate, though thoroughly unorthodox, title.

My wife, Marie Nandzik, spearheaded our expansion into jewelry. She’s well-versed in the industry and has a great mind and a great eye for crafting exquisite designs. God bless her, she tries to teach me about all the stones and metals and techniques, but 95% of it goes over my head.

Also, long time friend, Vinnie Russo, has designed a number of graphics for the company. He also convinced me to start up a podcast, which he edits and tweaks and everything else a sound engineer does. The podcast is definitely something we’ve done a poor job of keeping up with. I never imagined there was so much work behind it – at least in the way we’re doing it. We research everything thoroughly beforehand, then try to make it as entertaining as it is educational.

Oh yeah, and Vinnie’s also invaluable when it comes to quickly breaking down the booth at the end of a show.

WNW: What got you started in creating Grammar Matters designs?
Nandzik: That’s an interesting question with a long answer.

I came up with the idea while I was studying English at SUNY Fredonia. My peers’ grasp on grammar was so lacking that many professors literally stopped class to teach basic grammar lessons. As a joke, I created a series of away messages for AIM, including the “Outrunning Errands” and “Who’re” gags. The away messages got a lot of laughs, but I never thought much of it.

Once the gears started turning though, my original idea was to write a book about grammar, so I kept a Word file full of these little grammar goofs. The first entries were, of course, my pet peeves, like saying ‘A.T.M. machine’ or ‘P.I.N. number’. To this day those still make my eye twitch.

I also sketched out a significantly less clever design for the Outrunning Errands gag, intended to be one of many illustrations for the book. I knew I wanted comic-like panels and stick figures, but I’m not much of an artist (even when it comes to drawing stick figures).

After moving to Pittsburgh in search of new and exciting work, I got to talking with a friend of a friend before deciding to launch an actual business around the Grammar Matters design.

As an interesting bit of trivia, Mr. Grammar’s signature red tie (and what would later become the name of the company) was the result of a passing suggestion I made to liven up the stick figure’s personality and appearance.

Anyway, wonky classmates aside, my burgeoning fascination with poetry – especially in regard to line breaks – was another influence since, you know, poetry can get away with poor grammar in the name of ‘highbrow art’.

WNW: We see that you also create jewelry; do you plan on expanding Red Tie Products any further?
Nandzik: Absolutely.

We made a very distinct decision to name the company Red Tie Products (rather than ‘Grammar Matters’, which isn’t a very good name for a company, IMHO) so that we would have the flexibility to expand.

I’ve got some great ideas for non-grammar-related graphic t-shirts that are geared toward geeks, as well as posters.

The geek in me would also love to expand into video, board, miniature, and card gaming. I’ve got great ideas for them all.

WNW: What do you hope to accomplish with Grammar Matters?
Nandzik: I’d like to make some money, of course. More specifically, I’d like to be able to make enough money so that I could quit my other jobs.

On a much deeper level, though, I really want to inspire people to think as much as I want to make them laugh.

I launched Red Tie Products right when the Great Recession really hit hard (probably not the best business plan I ever came up with) back in 2008. At our first comic convention, I stood eagerly behind our table as we drew a crowd. Not everyone bought something, but everyone laughed – and that pattern continues to this day. So, to be able to offer people a good laugh – that’s something I hope to accomplish in good times as well as bad.

On the ‘inspiring thought’ side of things, I would certainly like more people to have a greater appreciation for language. Grammar should never be thought of as dry, boring, or irrelevant, even though it’s taught that way (I can’t understand why). In my opinion, the best way to appreciate the correctness of grammar – or, indeed, anything – is to appreciate its incorrectness. That’s why we use the comic panel design layout.

The study of grammar, like so many other avenues of study, is one that encourages analytical thought, which is really just the skill of knowing how to think, and I believe that knowing how to think deeply in a versatile manner will – by its very nature – help people better themselves. Based on my research, a language deficit is a major factor in juvenile crime.

As quoted by the U.S. Department of Justice:

The link between academic failure and delinquency, violence, and crime is welded to reading failure.

WNW: Why have you worked so hard to maintain ethically-produced merchandise?
Nandzik: I think it’s important to respect and dignify every human; and the idea of making any sort of gain directly off of someone else’s misfortune seems to me very much like burglarizing your neighbors, then selling their stuff at your garage sale. In my eyes, an unethical business is an illegitimate business.

My stance on this does make our products a little more expensive, but it’s not called the ‘high road’ for nothing. If we’re going to spend our money, we might as well spend it to ensure the future of our world is a good and decent place to live – or at least better than it used to be.

After all, it wasn’t so long ago in our own history that we took advantage of child labor, that we suppressed the rights of minorities, and even owned slaves. Yet since abolishing these immoral practices, how many minorities have helped to revolutionize the way we live our lives?

WNW: Have you always been interested in promoting literacy?
Nandzik: It was never really an overt interest of mine, no, but it was definitely something I did as an English/writing tutor. Other than Red Tie Products, the most fun I ever had promoting literacy was when I worked this temp job pushing a broom during the graveyard shift. I was working with a Bosnian refugee couple, and when we went on break, I helped them with their English and they helped me with my Bosnian. It was wonderful, and I continue to cherish those memories to this day. I just wish they didn’t chain smoke.

WNW: Do you have any plans to expand your fight for literacy?
Nandzik: Yes, I’d like to start up a community workshop, a scholarship, and a Mr. Grammar video game that would help people learn grammar. I’d also like to do a Mr. Grammar web comic, although I’m not sure if that really counts.

Certainly, though, I’m all ears if anyone has suggestions.

WNW: This final question is directed to Mr. Grammar himself. Do you ever tire of correcting grammar all day and dream of another profession? If so, what is that profession?
Nandzik: Some days I do tire of correcting grammar. It used to be a long, unforgiving job, but it’s better now that I’ve developed a sense of humor about myself.

Still, we all have our bad days, and on those days I like to sit back in my chair by the window and dream of being…Batman!

For more information on Paul Nandzik and the team behind Red Tie Products, visit www.redtieproducts.net.

By Elizabeth Milo

Perhaps that title should have a question mark at the end: chicklit is growing up? You can almost hear the incredulity in the inflection required for that question. The idea that chicklit ever could grow up seems like a long shot. How can a genre based around the ideas of perpetual youth and indulgence mature? Chicklit series don’t grow with their readers, their readers grow out of them.

This truth which we hold to be self-evident has now been challenged by a new wave of chicklit novels that are becoming increasingly popular. When chicklit first rose to stardom in the 90s, every book revolved around the same unbearably simple plotline of girl-meets-boy, girl-meets-road-block, girl-gets-boy-in-the-end. Since their rise in readership, scholars have argued that chicklit novels represent an important facet of the sociological and psychological lives of modern women and the effects the demands of society have on them… or something like that. Editors Suzanne Ferris and Mallory Young compiled sixteen essays that argue both for and against chicklit material in their 2005 book Chick Lit: The New Woman’s Fiction. Fifteen of those sixteen were in favor of appreciating and further studying the importance of chicklits based on their sociological merit and context within the literary history of feminist works. These books are supposed to be feminist books because the women totter around New York in really high heels and have sex with lots of men? Okay, maybe. But if the only thing oppressing them is which Yankee to date, that doesn’t sound like much of a struggle for suffrage to me.

As with most good, or at least absurdly popular, things in our culture, the chicklit fad originated in England. Just like The Beatles, scones, and Trading Spaces, chicklit started with the phenomenal success of authors such as Helen Fielding, whose novel Bridget Jones’s Diary was an international phenomenon. After Colin Firth’s revival of his idolized portrayal of Mr. Darcy for the film adaptation of Bridget Jones, most of the world is now familiar with Fielding’s somewhat degrading twist on Austen’s masterpiece Pride and Prejudice. (Ironically, though written 200 years later and after women have gained almost an equal footing in society, Bridget Jones manages to be less supportive of women than P&P. But I digress.) Once the British fad jumped the Atlantic, American authors took no time in turning out chicklit of their own, such as Candice Bushnell’s Sex and the City, which went on to become a behemoth of a cultural icon. I don’t think somebody squirreled away in a hovel could have avoided learning what Sex and the City is by now.

Most chicklit in America has continued to follow the trend of Sex and the City, focusing mostly on city women living their upper-middle-class lives, dealing with issues about husbands, boyfriends, children, jobs, and most importantly, sex. In 2009, Doree Shafrir wrote an article for Publisher’s Weekly entitled “Women's Lit: Chick Lit Gets an Update,” in which she argues that chicklit has grown up. Why does she think that? Because three new books are about women in New York who struggle with issues in their jobs, marriages, and sex life. Gee,that sounds familiar. Her main point is that these characters are women, not girls, who are dealing with real life issues. In Amy Sohn's Prospect Park West, the opening scene showcases one of these “real life issues,” which is so relatable, in fact, that if I had a nickel for every time I had to take the batteries out of my baby’s mobile and risked waking the baby up in order to replace the batteries in my vibrator so I could orgasm...I would have absolutely no money. Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus hit the nail on the head in their wickedly funny portrayal of rich New York woman in their novel The Nanny Diaries: the only thing missing from the lives of these women is a sharp smack upside the head.

Clearly America has failed to grow in the chicklit department, but you can bet on those trusty Brits to pull through. While “growing-up” in the States has taken on a much too literal interpretation of simply looking at older women, UK authors have started to look at older—and more serious—issues. In her latest novel, This Charming Man, Marian Keyes faces the issue of domestic abuse head-on in a not-so-nice way. In fact, when you get halfway through the book, you might feel as if you’ve been tricked into reading a story about abuse, because she allows her darker themes to lie low at the beginning. By the ending, however, if you’re a normal human being with a beating heart, you’ll feel like you should start a shelter for battered women and scourge the earth of evil. Her novel deals with abuse, depression, alcoholism, and of course marriage and sex, in a direct but sensitive way that will not allow the reader to disengage.

Perhaps British author Anna Maxted started the trend way back in 2001 with her hit novel Running in Heels. The story begins prosaically predictable with the “falling apart” of a skinny twenty-something’s life. She’s in self-destruct mode, and the audience is just waiting for prince charming to come along. When he does show up, though, so does another unwelcome guest: anorexia. This skinny-chic-twenty-something is too skinny, and the reader follows along as she goes through all the levels of denial, pain, bulimia, and hair loss until she confronts the rage inside of her that’s put her on this path.

Abuse, rape, and eating disorders aren’t the sort of things that spring to mind when you think of chicklit. And when you unsuspectingly pick up one of these heavy-hitting books, you will find no traces of the darker issues inside on the cover or the back. Authors are starting to sneak your vegetables in on you by wrapping them in chiffon dresses and London flats. But perhaps what chicklit readers need is to have these ugly truths spoon-fed to them. Of course there’s still romance, fashion, and the-best-sex-she’s-ever-had in these brightly colored novels, but there’s a realness, too, that makes these fairy tales a worthwhile read. Chicklits may never be feminist manifestos, but they are starting to grow up.

By Maggie Secara

Not everything is a lie.
Tempers flare, birds fly south
(not always for the sunshine)
even love, while it lasts,
is true as the blood
on the canvas walls, the relic
of someone’s Guernica afternoon;
but the truth is only important
when it’s useful, or harmful
in the end—
every word a felony.

The lies sift somewhere
between friends and murdering angels,
dropping from
the oak trees
like fireflies and morning dew
contaminating the crossroads,
virtue tied up in a kitchen rag
disguised as cloth of gold
tarnished on the battlefield
of casual death and idle weddings
without charity
or kindness
or grace.
The sword is quicker
but this will do.

voices, not voices
the shades of voices
bitter and muttering something
that sounds
like my name in a shadow

I should, if asked,
weigh my heart against a feather
defend with honour, apologize
with grace, bear a sentence
if earned. Instead,
I shout from the wall,
fling up my hands, and die
anyway.

I glide thru papyrus on a flat
reed boat
hunting water fowl startled
to stillness, flat
on the flat sky.
My brothers and my sisters, tiny
figures at the lotus prow
pull down the stars
and eat them.

By Elizabeth Milo and Sarah Schiavoni
(image credit: Dominique Signoret)

Cthulhurotica - n. (kə-THoo-loo-rot-i-kuh) – an anthology of Lovecraft-inspired erotica; a new branch of “weird erotica.”

WritersNewsWeekly recently spoke to Carrie Cuinn, the woman behind Cthulhurotica, “An Anthology of Lovecraftian Lust.” As an emerging new genre of weird erotica—erotica based in science fiction and fantasy—Cthulhurotica has received some raised eyebrows about its choice of inspiration. Will too many tentacles keep readers from enjoying the stories? Creator Carrie Cuinn stands by her decision to pull together an anthology all about the sexual encounters of these Lovecraftian characters: “For us, Cthulhurotica is the logical extension of the works of H.P. Lovecraft, who often mentioned female characters that he never explored.” Cuinn views this anthology as an opportunity for writers to explore the lives of minor characters in the Cthulhu tales and expand on Lovecraft’s stories. Cuinn is also quick to clarify that this is erotic fiction, not porn. The submission guidelines call for stories that “entice, flirt, and tease,” not stories that are violent or demeaning. Cuinn says, “there is a difference between sex, and sexy.” Although when people hear a name that includes “erotica,” they may assume that these stories are going to be hard-core, but the anthology is attempting to veer away from just that. Cthulhurotica is going to bring a new quality to Lovecraft’s works and characters and explore the vast world of the Cthulhu mythos. This anthology is trying to branch out from what is expected and bring a little love back into these Lovecraftian tales.

WNW: We’ve heard of Star Trek Slash fiction, Harry Potter fan fiction, and countless anime spin-offs created by fans, but why Cthulhu and the stories of H.P. Lovecraft?
Cuinn: Until this question, I had never considered whether what we’re doing with Cthulhurotica could be “fan fiction”. That’s like saying anyone who writes about zombies is writing George Romero fan fiction. In the United States, where we’re located, fan fiction is considered a derivative work of a currently copyrighted piece. It generally exists outside the canon of the original literature, and is rarely professionally published. H.P. Lovecraft’s works are no longer under copyright protection, and in addition there is a precedent of established writers continuing to expand the Cthulhu Mythos (most notably by August Derleth, Lovecraft’s friend, and the man who coined the term “Cthulhu Mythos”). To me, this kind of expansion is on par with Caleb Carr’s Sherlock Holmes novel, The Italian Secretary, or Seth Grahame-Smith’s addition of zombies into Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice.

WNW: In your brief explanation of the anthology, you told us you hope to expand on the stories of the female characters in Lovecraft’s tales; would you say you are trying to bring gender equality to his stories?
Cuinn: Absolutely. Whether it was a symptom of the time he lived in, or a personal choice, Lovecraft rarely included positive female characters in his stories. Asenath Waite, from “The Thing on the Doorstep” was actually an evil old man wearing a girl’s body like a suit, and his other major female character, Lavinia Whateley from “The Dunwich Horror” was merely a servant of a greater evil. Lovecraft usually limited his women to a mention that the main character had a wife, one who faded from the story a sentence or two later. To be fair, Lovecraft didn’t just limit female sexuality – none of his characters are romantic or sexual either. He simply left it out. We don’t want to only expand the role of the female in the mythos, we also want to include a spectrum of gender and sexuality models, to better reflect today’s society.

WNW: How do you see your anthology fitting into the relatively small world of Cthulhu fiction already out there? How will your anthology differ from or expand on other Cthulhu fiction?
Cuinn: Most writers who want to work in the Cthulhu mythos are drawn to it by its surreal qualities and the ability to explore madness. For Lovecraft, the moment of enlightenment in his stories usually drove his characters out of sanity and into a place both glorious and terrifying. By adding elements of sex and romance into that, we can touch on those places where lust and madness meet. Humans are often attracted to what they know is bad for them, and how much worse can you get than dark gods and slithering monsters?

WNW: How would you define “written porn” versus “erotica”? How explicit will the stories that you accept be, compared to, say, romance novels?

Cuinn: Pornography exists to show us sex. It’s graphic, and it rarely involves a plot more detailed than a broken sink or a pizza delivery. The point of porn is to get to the sex. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s in a different category. Erotica includes sex as part of a larger story that has to have a theme, a plot, and character development. When you read a story where two characters kiss and then retire behind a closed door, you know what they’re doing in the bedroom, the writer’s just choosing not to share it with you. In erotica, the writer leaves the door open a crack, and you get to glimpse the best moments.
As far as what we’re planning to accept – that’s going to be open until all of the submissions are in. The level of sex we’re comfortable with is just past “romance novel” but not all the way to “porn”. In other words, what could you get away with doing and still be able to say, “We didn’t have sex,” with a straight face? It’s possible we’ll accept stories on the condition that they tone down the sex a bit before publication, but it’s unlikely we’ll accept anything that needs major revisions (or additions) of plot.

WNW: Do you expect more humanoid on humanoid stories, or humanoid on tentacle romance?
Cuinn: I hope it’s a good mix of both!

WNW: Do you expect Cthulhu to become a Zeus-type character -- coming down to Earth for copulation?
Cuinn: So far none of the submissions we’ve received have actually featured Cthulhu, though it’s always possible. Cthulhu is more of an icon, the symbol of a mythos that includes a wide variety of characters and monsters. And, technically, it would be “rising up to the Earth” since current reports put him in R’lyeh, somewhere deep in the ocean.

WNW: This idea of collecting H.P. Lovecraft-inspired erotica is certainly quirky. How do you hope to garner attention for this anthology when it’s released and draw in a wide audience?
Cuinn: Because it is quirky, people are starting to take notice, and we’ll back that up by delivering an anthology full of beautifully crafted stories. I like to tease my writers that the thought process behind their submissions is, “Cthulhurotica? Oh, that’s too weird for me. Well, I can see how it would work for some people, but not me. Actually, I do have an idea…” and I’ve been told repeatedly that’s how it’s worked for them. I think that readers will approach it the same way. Once they see that it’s more than a quirky theme, that the book has great stories and helps to develop this longstanding fictional universe, they’ll read it and recommend it to others. I will continue the same level of marketing that I am currently doing (which is a combination of persistence and politeness) to keep our name on everyone’s minds.

WNW: Do you think that this Cthulhurotica anthology will draw its audience from current Cthulhu fans, or draw in new fans from other erotica fan groups?
Cuinn: I’m guessing that we’ll mostly appeal to those interested in the mythos to begin with, but also to fans of this new genre of “weird erotica” I see popping up all over.

WNW: Are you planning to tackle more anthologies in the future? Are there other mythical creatures or book series that you’d like to build upon outside of the realm of H.P. Lovecraft?
Cuinn: Along with my own writing, I do plan to edit another anthology some day. I enjoy taking a vision, releasing it onto the population, and waiting to see what comes back to me. Since I create mainly speculative fiction in my own writing, it will probably be on a similar theme, something I’m already invested in. My current loves are space, zombies, mad science, post-apocalyptic stories, and alternate history, which give me a lot of room to run wild.

Want to learn more about this project and its creator? Interested in submitting a story for consideration for the anthology? Visit the Cthulhurotica website for information and submission guidelines. Cthulhurotica is currently accepting submissions, but the submission period ends September 15th.

By Sarah Schiavoni

He loved the suddenness of spring—closing his tired eyes on grey and brown and opening them to shades of cool green hovering just outside his window. Spring always seemed to arrive overnight, but really it arrived by steady ascent, with hardly a soul taking notice. While the skeletal trees cast shadows on dry grass and brown earth, spring slowly brewed in their roots and branches, ready to arrive in spurts of crisp green and soft yellow. Spring woke everything from a cold, winter slumber—the unfurled leaves yawned on trees, the flower buds stretched out on their stems.

He loved falling asleep seeing the twiggy crabapples outside his window and waking up to find them dotted with vibrant pink blooms. He loved to stand by the flaky brown tree trunks and splay his hands over the bark, feeling the gritty curls scrape against his fingers and palms. His kept his feet bare so he could feel the grass between his toes, wet with dew and springy in the early morning. He loved the fresh smells, the caress of sunlight, and the subtle calm, but mostly it was how spring arrived, so sudden and triumphant after such a long cold spell—it was life after death; a reawakening of the senses.

His mother had always loved the winter, even before she got ill. She loved the frost; loved to wake up and see its spiky fan over the windows, like iridescent lace. On winter mornings in the kitchen, while piling golden pancakes and steaming eggs onto plates, she’d ask her son if he’d seen “Jack’s paintings” on the windows that morning. She loved the crisp, glittering snow, white sun, and bare trees.

It seemed to suit her that her hospital room was always like winter—the bare wooden chair in the corner like a solitary tree and the white walls like sheets of shiny snow. The only color in the room came from a sparse grouping of smudgy Kinkade’s, their blurry cottage scenes a poor substitute for the spring season her son loved so much. Her room was a mix of cold metal, white plaster, and dry air. The starched, white sheets and itchy, vanilla-colored blanket on her hospital bed were synthetic and rough against her icy, translucent skin. He could have paid for her to be moved to a nicer room, but she always shook his head at the suggestion. He wanted her to feel at home in her room, but so long as she got hot tea in the morning and was able to watch the local evening news, she was content and needed nothing more.

He hated to sit with his mother there, watching her stare listlessly out into the hall at the passing nurses, her hands white with cold. She never looked at all the “Get Well Soon” cards she got, painstakingly arranged on the windowsill by him. Her wig rested in tangles on a stand in the bathroom; though her head was only dusted with feathery down, she felt no need to cover it up. He hated her apathy and the emptiness in her voice when they spoke during his visits.

“Mom, why don’t you let me bring some flowers in here?—Perk up the place?”
His mother shook her head and stared out the grubby windows.

“The gift shop girl told me she has red tulips…you like the color red, don’t you?”

Still staring out the window, his mother sighed and straightened out the covers by her waist. “The room is fine as it is. You know the pollen makes my nose itch.”

She looked tired and small. Her lips were chapped from the winter air drifting through the cracks in the window frame. Her hands were crawling with spidery, blue veins that disappeared under the skin of her wrists and elbows.

“How about Gerber daisies? She’s got every color under the sun down there.”

His mother groaned. “They look fake. Too bright. I don’t know how they get them to be those wild colors.”

“She’s got roses down there too. Remember how dad used to always get you a yellow rose on your birthday?”

She smiled just a bit at the memory, but quickly pushed the thought aside. Her husband had died the year before. Heart attack. She’d just found out the month before that she had cancer and was making plans for chemo. They’d spent hours browsing online wig stores during that month, laughing at the ridiculous hairstyles and colors that were offered.

“I don’t need the clutter. I’ve already got enough junk on my nightstand—those nurses keep bringing me these silly gardening and cooking magazines. And I don’t have space on the windowsill with all those cards filling it up.”

Her son frowned at her as she gestured at the table by her bed, pointing out the little pile she called “clutter.”

He wanted to bring a little color and life to her room. Every time he visited, he stopped by the gift shop and perused their small flower selection in the grimy, chilled container in the back. The shop mostly stocked generic, seasonal flowers, but occasionally they received prettier flowers, like star gazer lilies or purple irises. When he got to her room, shuffling slowly on the newly-waxed linoleum, he’d tell her about the flower selection and they’d argue over whether or not to put some in a vase in the room. Sometimes, his mother relented, too tired to grouse about flowers agitating her allergies or messing up her nightstand. Most times, his mother started to ignore him after the third or fourth flower suggestion, choosing instead to turn on the TV and tune him out.

When he did succeed in bringing her flowers, she’d complain to him—the flowers were too bright, they made her eyes water, they cost too much. She never threw them out, but, inevitably, the nurses would forget to change the water in the vase, the flowers would lose their color, and eventually, the blooms shriveled up and fell from the stem.

She allowed flowers on her birthday, and he brought her yellow roses, hoping to conjure up happy memories of her times with his father; hoping to bring some life to her cloudy eyes. For once, she didn’t complain. When he set them by her bed, her eyes crinkled with happiness for a brief moment, but she didn’t thank him or smile when he and the nurses sang a quiet “Happy Birthday” to her after.

“Your father was a wonderful man” she said, her eyes rheumy.

He smiled at her, but she had a faraway look. She’d forgotten he was in the room.

She died a few days later, wrapped up in her itchy blanket with the tiniest of smiles on her face. The roses drooped in the vase by her bed, touched with the winter cold. Their petals were wrinkled, the edges brown and curled under. She hadn’t asked the nurses to put clean water in the vase or trim the ends of the stems. What water was left was a murky yellow-green and the stems were ragged and soft where they’d been left uncut. She liked her empty, cold room and itchy blankets. She preferred the white walls of the room and didn’t mind when the paintings got caked with dust and lost their color. Yellow roses were no substitute for the husband who had left her behind. The first blooms of spring had burst outside her hospital room window. She hadn’t even bothered to open the blinds.

By Anne Millbrooke

(In demonstration of the superiority of Wallace Stevens' poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird")

I
Animalia
Chordata
Aves, Passeriformes
Corvidae
Pica hudsonia

II
Common and conspicuous
In fact, ubiquitous

III
Black-billed like the relations
Crows, jays, and ravens
Yes, a big family.

IV
Wock wock-a-wock weer weer.
My ear not tuned for the noisemaker,
I cannot translate.

                                                                                ➞

V
Tail raised for walking
Straight for flying,
And dropped, descending.
Am I as obvious?

VI
Black hat, coat, and tie, white vest
Iridescent and flashy and formal

VII
The magpie is a scavenger
by occupation, but why, what
do we scavenge each day?

VIII
Following people through centuries
along paths, dirt roads, and pavement
Finding carrion for carrying on

IX
Dine on ticks and mice,
fruit or seeds, or roadkill,
Just as omnivorous as
the literary magpie.

                                                                                ➞

X
Flight.  Flying.
Take me.

XI
As spring snow covers blooming flowers,
go easy, go to the feeder, take the handout.

XII
Build a nest for speckled eggs
But winter roost among the trees

XIII
Birds, branches, snow:
piebald bird in piebald scene.
Where’s Waldo?

By Elizabeth Milo

When I was a kid, my mom knew I would be different when my favorite task was matching all of the markers to the right color of cap.  I’ve always had a touch of OCD, and one of my enduring quirks is my love of making lists.  I used to write them on sticky notes, in my planner, even on my hand.  I’m a member of the Facebook group “I love to make lists.” I love to categorize all of my items, put them in sequential order, use my super neat handwriting to make the list look nice, and I love the satisfied feeling of crossing something off the list when it’s done.  I especially love merging multiple partially completed lists into one new, fresh list.  So, it’s only natural that I wanted to write a list of some kind for my next editorial-- but what should it be?  A list of books to read over the summer?  Overdone. A list of favorite movie quotes?  Fun, but not relevant… You see my conundrum?  I stumbled upon my answer the other day, though, when considering the state of our language: a list of grammar rules that everybody should learn.  Not rules to follow, but to learn.

After a conversation with a few friends (who shall remain unnamed) the other day, I realized that even among the educated elite of our generation, there is a woeful lack of common knowledge about the rules of the English language.  Some of you may remember I wrote an editorial a few weeks ago about why we shouldn’t be concerned that the English language is changing, and I stand by that.  What concerns me now, though, is that fewer and fewer students are learning and retaining the rules of the English language.  If one intends to argue that it is unimportant to learn or follow a specific rule, one should be able to properly identify that rule and present a case as to why it is unnecessary.  There are plenty of rules I find outdated, but I would not be able to argue against them adequately if I didn’t know what they were and why they were invented in the first place.

The English language is changing every day, but it takes some time for the rule book to catch up to the way that people are speaking on a day-to-day basis.  Every year, the newest edition of the MLA handbook comes out so that professors can assign their Writing 101 students to purchase a copy as a reference guide and the Modern Language Association can make more money; but the differences between Editions 3 and 6 are so few, you would have to go through the book with a fine-tooth comb to find them.  (Should I put one space or two after this period in this very specific citation? What to do, what to do??)  Big changes in our language take place over long periods of time and can only be noticed when comparing samples from two different eras.  Metaphorically, as we grow older, we rarely notice day-to-day changes in our appearance; after a year or two we may note some differences, but we see the starkest contrast when looking at ourselves as infants and aged adults side-by-side.  Language change works the same way: we may only see a few differences in our lifetime, but when we compare examples from hundreds of years apart, we start to see big differences.

My list for you is not a list of English rules that I think you should follow-- It is a list of rules that you should go out and learn about so that you can make up your own mind as to whether they are important or not.  Although there’s not much chance that any controversial rules are going to be thrown out the window, there is always an interesting and ongoing debate about those rules that any English speaker has the right to join.  But if you want to play, you have to know the rules of the game. Literally. Sometimes it’s not enough to go by ear or feel when deciding if something is correct.  If you want to see an old-fashioned rule eliminated because it sounds awkward or clumsy, you need to have more back-up to your argument.  What’s the part of speech?  What’s the purpose of that rule?  How could confusion be avoided if the rule were changed?  Knowing about your language and how you use it makes you a dangerous and skilled wielder of words.

Remember, this is a list of rules that you should learn the names of and be able to identify in a line-up, not that I think you should blindly follow. I didn’t define them because part of the challenge is for you to find out what they are on your own.  Once you do that, though, I hope you will come back and share your informed decisions with me.  I added my vote at the end of each in the hopes it will entice you back to engage in a lively conversation, whether you agree with me or not.

Milo’s Relatively Short List of Nit-picky Rules that You Should Learn to Identify and Use Correctly so as to Better Support Your Choices in Your Speech and Writing

1). The Dangling Participle—much dreaded among school teachers and students alike, this common error can cause some genuine confusion (Milo’s vote: for)

2). Never End a Sentence with a Preposition—a volley of arguments is constantly flying back and forth over the validity of this rule (Milo’s vote: against)

3). Misplaced Modifiers—like a bad melon, once you learn to identify them, they will never slip past you again (Milo’s vote: for)

4). The Oxford Comma—the result of too many stylistic formats, it lies at the heart of the MLA v. AP debate (Milo’s vote: for)

5). That vs. Which—to master this rule, you have to really know your parts of speech, including clausal phrases (Milo’s rule: against)

6). Split Infinitives—another rule teachers tend to be sticklers about; this rule sometimes has to be broken to make the intent of the writer clear (Milo’s vote: against)

By Kirk B. Young

I was five years old the first time he looked at me. It was the middle of the night; I had chicken pox and I'd been scratching feverishly at my body all day only to be put to bed wrapped up in a wool blanket. You'd hope it was a cruel joke and not just malevolence, and truth be told it was neither. Auntie Lilith never had any children of her own, and when she looked after me during the summer months it had always seemed more of a neutrality with which she approached my presence there. Being her sister's child, she'd look after me when needed, but her general disdain for most children and other people led her to spend more time in the garden with her adopted saplings than with me. I and my largely uninterrupted play time were fine with this arrangement, even when confined to the bedroom for the day with my pox.
So yes, without giving it much thought Auntie Lilith wrapped me up in a woolen blanket, tucked me in, and then turned out the lights and went downstairs. And I began to itch. And itch. And itch.
Eventually I thought whatever the five year old version of “to hell with this” is and threw the blanket off of myself, finding enough momentary relief in the absence of any friction against my skin other than cool air from the window to fall into a slumber.
It was some time later that I woke with a start, eyes fixing on the popcorn ceiling above and wondering how many little nubs there were above me in hopes of boring myself back to sleep. But it didn’t take, so I sighed and looked out the window to my right and that’s when I began to feel it. Even a child can feel it: the sensation of being watched. Normally when this happens in the middle of the night you will look and find no one there staring back at you other than your own imagination, its eyes having already bored holes into your paranoid mind.
I looked slowly, thinking the sensation might fade before my eyes had crossed the room, but I didn’t rotate long before setting my sights on a dark figure in my doorway, a man, very tall, with a somewhat thinner build. I could see no facial features in the dark other than his eyes, bathed by a strip of light falling just perfectly across his sockets. Was it by chance? Did he position himself purposely? I wanted to think the former while experience tells me it’s the latter.
He didn’t say anything. I had no idea who he was, but being five even the shadiest of figures were innocent until they indicated otherwise in my eyes, so I assumed he was in the right place, standing there in the doorway where he was supposed to, because the world was wondrous and wide and I found something new each day and surely this man must just be another part of life, another adult to buy me toys or read me a story or take me to the carnival as my father had a week before.
“What’s your name?” I asked him, because above all else five year olds want to know how to address the person from whom they’ll soon ask for things, and in order to do that they need a name.
But he didn’t answer, so I frowned, and rolled over in bed onto my other side so as to not have to acknowledge him. I now sometimes wish I was still capable of as much indignation as I was then. Alas.
I shut my eyes and tried to sleep, but failed to do so. After awhile I opened them and stared at the wall. There was no shadow cast there by the moon shining through the window behind me, but I felt as if he was indeed standing there. It was at this point that I became scared.
The floorboard creaked behind me. I heard the rustle of fabric.
I turned over, starting to say “what are you doin' mister?” but only made it to the point of uttering “what,” because as I turned the wool blanket was thrown down over my face and body, smothering me in its itchy warmth.
I screamed and began flailing wildly, and managed to roll off of the bed, the blanket coming with me, intertwined amongst my legs and arms, and once I hit the wooden floor I instantly pushed up in my wild movements, tearing myself out of the thorny fabric and breathing as heavily as a child can I bolted for the door, not even looking to see if the man was still in the room.

Auntie Lilith scolded me the next morning for getting out of bed and sleeping on the couch downstairs. She said I was spreading my germs and that she might be getting sick because of me.
But she never asked me why I went down there.

The fall came and once Mother and Dad were back I was able to return home. After getting through the chicken pox and a particularly bad spell of the summer flu at Auntie Lilith’s, I hadn’t given much more thought to the man, but one night after dinner we were watching the television and whatever was on reminded me somehow, so I asked Mother about the man who lived with Auntie Lilith. She was quite confused, telling me I was foolish and that Auntie Lilith lived alone: my uncle had died in a fire many years before I was born and apparently Auntie Lilith had chosen a life of solitude ever since. I was the more confused of the two of us, but there are times as children that we accept things that don’t make sense for no particular reason, and this was one of those times for me.

Another year passed and it was time to go to Auntie Lilith’s for the summer once again. By that time I had forgotten completely about the experience I’d had the previous year, other than the bouts with sickness. Since I was feeling stronger and bigger though, I thought for sure I wouldn’t even catch cold that year.
Sometime about halfway through the summer, I was laying under that wool blanket itching something fierce again, so I pushed it off and fell asleep to the gentle caress of the cool breeze coming through the window on my skin.
I woke in the middle of the night, and once again found that man staring at me from the doorway. I frowned at this, knowing right away he wasn’t going to say a thing. Rather than face his silence, I thought it better to cut short our dance and turn away from him as I had a year before. Once again, I was unable to sleep and felt him standing behind me, so I turned to see what it was he wanted.
I should’ve known. Once again that blanket was cast upon me, heavier than before, he was pushing it down on me – I flailed and escaped just as I had before and this time I spent the night on the couch downstairs and I was up the next day and eating breakfast before Auntie Lilith even heard her alarm clock go off. I was perturbed, but being a child, I would prove rather resilient.

The incident reoccurred, year after year. As I got older and became more aware of time I realized it was on the same day each year. By the time I was eight I understood it was a recurring experience and began to spend that night on the couch downstairs. Adaptation is survival. I read that in a book many years later, and felt pretty proud of myself for having implemented such a strategic existence before having any idea it was strategic, much less what the word “strategic” meant.
Each year my mother would ask me if Auntie Lilith had had any more male visitors late at night and each year I would answer that I had seen the same one. Each year she’d laugh, brushing it off, chalking it up to my active imagination.

When I was eleven, it was different. Perhaps Auntie Lilith had grown tired of my presence year after year, perhaps she began expecting some form of payment as I got older, but in any case, the face that greeted me upon arrival that summer was not one of a friendly nature, nor were the parting words with my parents. Mother just looked at me in that way she would when appropriate, it was better than saying “well son, this is just the way of the world sometimes.” But I knew what it meant.
It only got worse from there. Auntie Lilith was miserable to me that summer, and though I was no perfect child, I knew from being around my classmates that I was one of the better ones. I did chores before I played, I kept to myself and wasn’t an unnecessary nuisance, I read and learned and retained and I was hungry to know what the world was truly made of and had to offer me. She was not appreciative of any of these traits.
As we came closer to the date of the incident Auntie Lilith became more and more agitated. She stopped making me meals after the first few weeks of my stay there, and when she would shuffle through the kitchen in her silent way, she’d glare at me as I prepared myself a sandwich, as if I had no right to her food while I was in her care. I learned to ignore it after only a few days, as I was a wise man of the world, and had learned from talking to my schoolmates that if she was this wound up it meant one of two things: she was either aching for the kiss of a man, or she was on something called PMS, which after much playground debate we determined stood for “Pretty Mad Son-of-a-bitch” despite my protests that a woman couldn’t be a son of an anything. My friends weren’t as quick as I though, and I was overruled.
   
On the day before the incident, I was reading upstairs in the bedroom when I heard a great commotion of pots and pans downstairs. I rushed down to ensure Auntie Lilith was okay, and when I found her she was cursing so vehemently I thought for sure she’d cut or struck herself with one of the items cluttered about the floor. When I entered she gave me a glare that would scare the devil and shouted “Look what you did! All my pots and pans are all over the place because I was going to make you dinner, you little bastard! Go upstairs and think about what you’ve done!”
I must have betrayed my confusion with my facial expression because she quickly stomped her way through the mess to where I stood on the other side of the kitchen and smacked me right across the face. It was so hard and I was so unprepared that I actually fell down at the foot of the stairs there, not even crying because I was so unsure of what was happening.
“Don’t come back downstairs until I tell you!”
With that she picked me up and smacked me on the bottom and I made my way up the stairs as quickly as I could. Had I been my younger indignant self I might have called back to her “that didn’t hurt, not like when Daddy does it!” Perhaps it’s better that I didn’t.
I finished reading my book on the bed, the wool blanket pushed to my side. Every once in awhile I heard a door slam downstairs, and at one point I was sure I’d heard the front door shut and the truck drive away for a time, returning later, but as the bedroom was on the back side of the house I wasn’t able to confirm my suspicions. Once I was done with the reading material, I sat there quite bored for the remainder of the evening. Eventually my boredom became so severe that I was able to fall asleep.
   
I woke at the expected time, though I’d forgotten about my appointment in all the day’s commotion, and found that this year was different than all those before. The man was standing at the door, but it was closed, and he was in the room in front of it. It would be the last time he looked at me.
The room was on fire.
The flames were high, licking the popcorn nubs of the ceiling, and lining the floorboards all around my bed. I looked to the window, but with the fire being taller than I would be, even standing on the bed, it was a lost cause and I knew it. I would jump through the flame but before I could unlock and raise the window I would most certainly be a marshmallow.
It was then that I looked at the man in panic, and realized he was standing in the midst of the flames. It was a sight beyond comprehension, reminding me at the time of a 3D film or the optical illusions where you must set your eyes on them just right in order to see the image – in this case, a man consumed by fire but totally unaffected. But because he was well lit in this setting I was able to see that his clothes looked as if they were already charred and blackened, though I could see the flames licking him hadn’t even begun to abate yet.
Then he was moving toward me, and my eyes would have gone wide with anticipation if I hadn’t been afraid they would melt out of my sockets from the nearby heat, and then we broke our cycle because this time I didn’t flip over and away from him, I looked up and at him, right into his eyes. They were blue, and beautiful, and yet they seemed hollow somehow, as if his soul had dipped down into the darkest recesses of his being. That, or it had ballooned out and manifested itself in his image.
The wool blanket was forced down on me. I only struggled minimally this time, knowing that the fire was around my bed and would soon be upon me. I couldn’t roll off. I couldn’t fight it. So I resigned to my fate inside my itchy wool capsule.
And then I was lifted.
And held.

I do not know how much time passed. It felt like ages. But after a long while, I was set onto the ground, quite gingerly in fact, which I interpreted as a sign that I could eject myself from the wool cocoon in which I had been hidden.
Emerging I found the entire room burnt to the blackest bits of crumbly dust. It was dark, but I could hear the owls and frogs outside much clearer than before, and then I realized: there were no walls.
At that point a fireman came up what remained of the stairs and carefully entered the remains of the room, and the look on his face alerted me to the fact that I shouldn’t have been there.
I have slept under a wool blanket every night since then.

I never stayed at Auntie Lilith’s again after that. I wasn’t ever told I would have to, and I did not ask to do so. In fact, the next time I saw Auntie Lilith was at her funeral five years later. She had burned to death after her stove caught fire while cooking one evening. The fire department said it was a freak and unfortunate accident.
I believe it was a premeditated plan that finally came full circle. Her dinner that night came, and it was uppance.
And he waited too long to serve it to her, if you ask me.