The Writing Conference: A Paper Dragon

Cave Canem: A Special Section

She likes to write about dragons the fourth-grader that I met this morning who sat at a little formica-topped desk.

Her flying snakes strike from the air, grip children in their talon-fangs, vomit the undigested bone.

I wanted to say, “Tell me more about your dragon snake.”

Is she like Pteranodon, the flying meat-eater of cretaceous days?

Is she like deinonychus, who hung in packs and ripped with cleaver-claws?

Did you find her in a dream or buried in a fossil cast?

“What does your snake write?” I wanted to ask.

Do her words trouble teachers and parents?

Is she a stand-in for dragons you don’t speak?

I wanted to say these things, but I’m not a general, and how would I look, sending a child like this to the front?

So I said, “Is this for the read-around?”

And she said, “I’m going home to write about Martin Luther King.”