[Subject line from Louis MacNeice's "Snow." September always reminds me of MacNeice because of the passage from Autumn Journal that begins: "September has come and I wake..."]

Hello, September. I need more sleep before I deal with you in earnest, judging from the grilled cheese sandwich I tried to make for lunch. (There are far worse meals than a grilled cheese shambles, but still.)

August was all but a blur. I ended up saying "I can't spare time for ____ until September" a lot, and today I found myself typing "I won't have time to do more with ____ until December." Yikes. On the plus side, it pleases me to have work lined up to the start of my sabbatical (18 Oct - 28 Nov); I'll have to log in some more hours on one project midway through, but it won't be the clusterfuck that hoovered up much of my 2009 stay in France and the Czech Republic.

There is some fresh anthology action to report:

My poem "Goose Goose Duck" appears in -gape-seed- (which, in spite of what Amazon says, is in fact in print and available. *sigh* I'm checking with Uphook on an alternative; in the meantime, the "Look Inside" feature works, and there are plans for readings here in Nashville and in South Carolina January 2012).

Two of my pieces for 7x20 will be reappearing in 140 and Counting.

I received a lovely message from Rose Lemberg, who is editing a feminist speculative anthology for Aqueduct Press. The Moment of Change will include my poem "The Stepsister."

Say a Little Prayer looks like it's shipping to bookstores this week. It includes my "Prayer for Perspective."

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Socially, I was pretty scarce last month, but there was a memorial gathering that included quality time with my de facto big sister and some of her dearests (and conversations ranging from lysosome/peroxisome research and working conditions in Saudi Arabian hospitals to recording Rafael Nadal's grunts for a raunchy birthday gift). Then there was Miz O's birthday celebration, which Knight wrote about a couple of days later.

And then a few days after that, I went to hear Pierce and Grace Pettis at the Bluebird, and I'm currently tangling with a poem I started a day or two after that. Onward...