Poem: "Gate C 22" by Ellen Bass

At gate C 22 in the Portland airport
a man in a broad-band leather hat kissed
a woman arriving from Orange County.
They kissed and kissed and kissed. Long after

the other passengers clicked the handles of their carry-ons
and wheeled briskly toward short-term parking,
the couple stood there, arms wrapped around each other
like satin ribbons tying up a gift. . . .

[Continued on the website of The Missouri Review,
where "Gate C 22" by Ellen Bass was published in 2002.]

A Few Books, Mostly Memoirs

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Despite loving Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, I hadn't read any of her books that dealt more with religion than writing. Recently, though, I read all three of them, and found that, like Bird by Bird, each was at least as much memoir as how-to manual.

Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith

Trust me when I say that this was the first time I'd ventured into the Religion section of a bookstore for some new reading material.
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Also very late in the game, I finally read David Sedaris's Me Talk Pretty One Day. I'd had two of his books on my shelves for years; I'm now moving on to the second (more recent) one.

A few months ago, I bought a book of essays that was supposed to be witty and wonderful, and I don't know--it just didn't work for me. I plowed through the entire book trying unsuccessfully to understand what the reviewers were raving about. So I tried not to pay attention to all the hype about Me Talk Pretty One Day to avoid being similarly disappointed, but this book was terrific.
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I meant to add this to one of my blog posts a long time ago: a chapbook from Dancing Girl Press called The Terrible Baby, a collection of poems by Rebecca Cook. The cover is what initially drew me to that particular chapbook; it's a painting by Lauren Matthews Levato called "Maternal." (The second draw was the tantalizingly provocative title of the chapbook.)