Ellie@Home by Nicole Kapise-Perkins

To the Light of September By W. S. Merwin When you are already here you appear to be only a name that tells of you whether you are present or not and for now it seems as though you are still summer still the high familiar endless summer yet with a glint of bronze in the chill mornings and the late yellow petals of the mullein fluttering on the stalks that lean over their broken shadows across the cracked ground but they all know that you have come the seed heads of the sage the whispering birds with nowhere to hide you to keep you for later you who fly with them you who are neither before nor after you who arrive with blue plums that have fallen through the night perfect in the dew

We began the day with rain today, carrying over from yesterday. Now the day is beautifully sunlit, but as much as I enjoy lovely sunshiny days, a small part of me misses the rain.... A Prayer for Rain By Lisel Mueller Let it come down: these thicknesses of air have long enough walled love away from love; stillness has hardened until words despair of their high leaps and kisses shut themselves back into wishing. Crippled lovers lie against a weather which holds out on them, waiting, awaiting some shrill sign, some cry, some screaming cat that smells a sacrifice and spells them thunder. Start the mumbling lips, syllable by monotonous syllable, that wash away the sullen griefs of love and drown out knowledge of an ancient war— o, ill-willed dark, give with the sound of rain, let love be brought to ignorance again. Originally appeared in the March 1964 issue of Poetry magazine.

I hope this finds you and your loved ones well. My family has been fine during this stressful time, anxiety a little high but nothing debilitating, and certainly nothing we haven't been able to work through. Still, each day is an exercise in uncertainty, wondering if we are doing enough to keep ourselves and others safe, wondering if our luck will change, and what we will do if that does happen. We recently learned that our boy will not be going back to school next month (we weren't going to send him anyway), and now my husband and I are trying to figure out how we are going to oversee our son's virtual schooling while both of us are working full time. My husband has said that is the main topic of canversation in his workplace, as many of his coworkers are parents to school-age children and both parents are working. It is less of a conversation at my workplace; not so many of us have school-age children, though a handful have school-age grandchildren. Because I work

   Good Evening and Happy Memorial Day! This post is far later than I planned thanks to technical difficulties (sob, sob) but here it is, better late than never! The earlier version of this post was wry, witty, and weird, and I don’t recall any of it now on my THIRD attempt. So without further ado (or headaches) I’m going to dive in. I have 34 books for this summer’s list. Because I can’t order from my library, I scoured my shelves for books that I haven’t read or have not finished. I managed to come up with 28. I grabbed one of Josh’s books, and two of Liam’s, then on a whim treated myself to a copy of Caleb Carr’s The Alienist and Angel of Darkness for my Kindle. Then, just when I thought I had enough (plenty!) Henry Roi from HellBound Books kindly sent me a review copy of The Horror Writer: A Study of Craft and Identity in the Horror Genre compiled and edited by Joe Mynhardt. This is at the top of my reading list, partly because it sounds really interesting and informative, a

(I stole that from Hawthorne. Sorry Natty.)    Retold faerie tales are such fun to read. You get to experience the writer's thoughts on a traditional tale, sometimes told in a familiar manner, oftentimes as a completely new approach. I haven't read many novels of retold tales, but I have volumes of anthologies of them. Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling gave us these magnificent collections of tales: Snow White, Blood Red; Black Thorn, White Rose; Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears; Black Swan, White Raven; Silver Birch, Blood Moon; Black Heart, Ivory Bones . I bought Snow White, Blood Red when I was a senior in high school; it took me 25 years, but I now own the whole set. (I neglected homework for 3 days while I read the whole set back to back. It was a wonderful weekend.) Tanith Lee produced Red As Blood, or Tales From the Sisters Grimmer , giving her readers a heartbroken dying god as the Pied Piper and a woefully misunderstood queen in Snow White. Angela Carter started it all wi

    I've never been much of a TV person. Even as a kid I was more likely to pick up a book, unless Voltron, The Pirates of Dark Water , or The Mysterious Cities of Gold was on (anyone remember that one? No? Gods I'm old.) In middle- and high school I was a devoted fan of Robin of Sherwood , The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes , and The Highlander . Then I found La Femme Nikita , and then Witchblade and Dark Angel premiered (and then tanked after two seasons each. Much sadness.), and Kingdom Hospital only lasted one season...I'm seeing a pattern here.    I've been watching quite a bit of television lately; well, for me, anyway! Every Wednesday we pile on the couch with takeout and watch The Masked Singer . It looked like it was going to be a fun show, but it's even better than I expected. Family-friendly, funny, and with great music (mostly...Rob Gronkowski cannot sing!) Scrolling through On Demand one night Josh and I found the Showtime se

   I am so glad we had a good couple of days this weekend, because A: my apartment needed a good airing, and B: my back steps were looking really shoddy. Two beautiful almost-70 degree days went a long way toward resolving both issues.    Windows were pushed open, screens were popped in, and we left the back door open, much to the delight of the cats, intrepid explorers they. Watching my husband try to her a honeybee out of the kitchen while explaining to it why it didn't want to be in the house was definitely worth it. Liam and I planted strawberries and herbs in outdoor pots and I started my seed flat in the kitchen. This year's container garden attempt includes sweet peppers, a variety of hot peppers, five kinds of tomato, beans, cucumbers, mini squash, radishes, lettuce, and nasturtiums, plus a couple odd balls like cucamelons and jelly melons, because why not? These last two didn't sprout at all last year, but I also just direct-planted them outside. I think squirrel