Last Call

by David Lee

Few poets of Western America fill the organic intellectual role better than David Lee. His poetry is the real deal when it comes to recording hilariously insightful and linguistically accurate observations of rural culture and America at large while using a host of astute literary allusions and techniques. Imagine Robert Frost simultaneously channeling Will Rogers and Ezra Pound. Imagine Chaucer with a twang. "Last Call" is bloody brilliant and wickedly witty."

Genres: Poetry

146 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

David Lee is the author of more than fifteen books of poetry including So Quietly the Earth, published by Copper Canyon Press in 2004. In 1997 he was named Utah s first Poet Laureate and has received the Utah Governor s award for lifetime achievement in the arts. A former seminary candidate, semi-pro baseball player, and hog farmer, he has a Ph.D. with a concentration in the poetry of John Milton. He taught in the Department of Language and Literature at Southern Utah University for three decades, where he received every teaching award presented, including teacher of the year three times.

Reviews

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Last Call, David Lee
Wings Press
978-1-60940-375-1
$16, 134 pgs

I have a new Poetrypalooza favorite and a new aspiration in life - for someone to love me this much. Last Call by David Lee is a celebration of, and ode to, his friend the late William Kloefkorn, Poet Laureate of Nebraska. These poems chronicle the lives of a rural West Texas community and the many ways in which the characters of this small town are braided together. Especially one Billy Klogphorne and one Clovis Ledbitter, whom I suspect I ran across many years ago at the now-defunct Cattleman's Restaurant outside Colorado City, Texas. I know these people, I know this place.

Watching the recurring characters develop is a joy. There are many monologues that had me truly laughing out loud. For example, this is the title of one of the poems: "Substitute Teacher or The morning Billy Klogphorne taught the adolescent male Sunday School class lesson on the designated Christian Leader Preparation outline topic of Genesis 5:18, 19 and 23, 24, proving Lamech and polygamy were of the lineage of Cain and therefore accursed of God and Why he was never invited back to teach Sunday School again." Yep. Lee has an astonishing gift for colloquial speech that borders on a sort of onomatopoeia, if that makes any sense. I suspect those of you who know his work will understand what I'm trying to say. There is a prodigious and kindly intelligence at work and play here. I cannot recommend this volume highly enough.

My favorite:

The Traildust Gospel

¡Contempla!
-Juan Bautista, who, folk legend tells us,
lost his mind over a woman's footprints
in the dust somewhere east of Pecos

1

Onella Penny smoked a pipe
P.A. tobacco you could smell
two yards over
nobody every mentioned
outside our neighborhood
but what finally made her famous
after the big stomp
was when we noticed
how she walked so hard
for a woman who wasn't
to speak of necessarily
fleshy

in a dry season
her steps wove dust
cyclone children on the way
to the trash barrel or clothes line
past her ankles, swirls
almost to her knees
so that

one August morning
Billy Klogphorne and Clovis Ledbitter
perched on the back porch furniture
morning coffeeing in short sleeved shirts
saw her emerge like Venus
in an ocean of heat waves
with a kitchen trash
bucket

footstep whirlwinds
all around her back yard, in immaculate Texanese
Clovis said One them air dust devils
gets under her housecoat
up her nightgown arising
she'll lift herself
like a full grown female angel
right off the ground
I bet

she
looked smartly their way
so Billy couldn't laugh or take the wager
leaned over and pretended
something in his coffeecup
needed to be looked at
anything else right then
was not going to be worth the chance

2

Then the day Marvin Penny
came outside
looking like second place
in a two entrant
world champion fist whipping
she became
legend

neither one surprised
after they heard the scream
through the housewalls across the yard
to the back porch PBR libations
when she learned the rumor
of his gallavantation with Kim Pierce
Billy in perfect Tejano splendor said

Clovis
that isn't no knuckebumps on his head
you get up and look close
I'll put two dollars
yougn see a clear footprint
from his busted lip
up between and past
that eye'll be swolt black tomorrow
with a bloody nose in the middle
Clovis said No bet
that looks to be a fact

3

When Cephas Bilberry heard
at the Dew Drop Inn that night
he said Well I hope Marvin he learnt
a lesson from it either way
whatever it was needing
such immediate education
Billy said I imagine he did
Cephas said That being what?
Billy said Next time
he gets knocked on his ass
he'll make sure he falls down
so the following foot marks
don't show

Cephas
said You mean
whoever did that stomp
it was after he'd already been knocked down?
Clovis said
Unless she can walk around in the air
stomping on heads, you know
a better way?

Billy said
If it's a point
needs to be made
or a trailway to be commended
it might as well be stated proper
so the muckling effort
doesn't need to be repeated

Cephas
said Well that might be right
Clovis said Yep
ever footstep in this drought
raises a genuine cyclome or leaves a print
sometimes permanent
and that's not blowing smoke
or preacher talk
and Cephas said Godamitey's mama
aint it the truth?

4

Juan Diego Mendietta
unloading a case of Pabst's Blue Ribbon beer
into the ice cooler at the Dew Drop Inn
heard a voice
saying A woman who walked in air
left a footprint on the face
of Marvin Penny
that could be seen clearly
with one's own eyes

that night
he told Father Gutierrez
the things he heard but the Padre
shook his head sadly and said No my son
these are the words of a fool
drunk on bootleg beer
you must try to remember
milagros almost never occur in Tejas
where there are too many gringos
for the Lord's work

so
Juan Diego Mendietta
went home in despair
his hope of imparting a miracle's appearance
shattered like his youthful dreams
of making love to Hooter Hagins
but he told his wife Eva who some said
was de la familia de las brujas
while he ate the tacos she made for him
what he heard spoken clearly
who told

her sister Maria Calvones
who told her cousin Isabel Ramones
who cleaned Onella Penny's house
every Monday from nine en la manana
until la hora de cuatro in the afternoon
who went to the Penny casa
the next morning even though it was a Thursday
and knocked

when he
opened his door he said
You aint posta be here today yet
it aint Monday is it?
she screamed and pressed her hands to her cheeks
the inbdelible print of a foot
clearly visible on Marvin Penny's face
¡Madre de dios! she screamed
he said What the hell?
but Isabel Ramones turned and ran
down the calle shouting
¡Es un Milagro! ¡Un Milagro!

soon
votary candles appeared nightly on the porch
of Onella and Marvin Penny's home
which he removed and threw
into the garbage barrel in his dusty back yard
until Onella stopped him saying
You leave those goddam things
right where they are and he said
Yes dear

entonces
for a decade the casa de Penny
became a flickering shrine to the miraculous
footprint of the Virgin seen by many
including Juan Diego Mendietta
who was said to be the first witness
and Isabel Ramones who gave the miracle
confirmation

and it came to pass
at last Onella died of consumption
and el viejo Marvin Penny grew old and sacred
the hairs of his head white as snow
and en la tarde when he went
into his dusty yard
to sit in the warm sun and remember
all those events of his life
that never actually occurred
la gente would come to his house
to sit at his knees and view his face
where at times

when the light
shone from the exact right angle
a small perfect footprint
could be seen by a select few
who were chosen to be witness
and the paisanos would touch his shoulders
and the denim fabric of his clothing
whispering to him
beseeching forgiveness

David Lee was raised in West Texas, my home. He is the author of twenty books of poetry, the first Poet Laureate of Utah, and recently retired as the Chairman of the Department of Language and Literature at Southern Utah University. His many awards include the Mountain & Plains Booksellers Award in Poetry, the Western States Book Award in Poetry, and the Utah Governor's Award for lifetime achievement.

[Larry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Originally reviewed in 15Bytes, Utah's Art Magazine
http://artistsofutah.org/15bytes/14oc...

David Lee’s latest collection of poetry, Last Call (WingsPress 2014), is a natural and honest pleasure to read. It is like an afternoon at an old watering hole with your buddies elbowed up all along the whiskey-stained oak, heels hooked in the bar foot rest, and the former poet laureate of Utah, Mr. Lee himself, serving up the day’s oratory libations.

Last Call is a eulogy to Lee’s colleague in verse, and late friend, Bill Kloefkorn. The poems also tell a sweeping story set in Garza County, Texas, that revolves around “The Monument to the South Plains.” The monument is young Willy John’s “indigenous sculpture.”

…a tower amalgamated between an obelisk
and a Babel ziggurat, a spiral of plough shares
fenders and motor covers, tractor seats and steering wheels
a corn planter, spring tooth harrow and a flat cultivator
manure spreader, deep trench, disc cultivator and a windrower

Lee’s Garza County, not in the heart of Texas but surely positioned in an important organ--say the spleen?--is populated with characters divers and appealing. Their language is simple and colloquial, roughshod and earthen--“Texanese.” Two retired professors, Billy Klogphorne and Clovis Ledbitter hold court through most of the poems with their bickering and erudition.

That, sir, being a highly commendable votive castureation worthy of one PBR

Which I accept with honor

Let us go then you and I
while the evening spreads against the sky
like alcoholics to the School Board Meeting

I, sir, am not an alcoholic
I am a votive casturationist drunk

The difference being?

Alcoholics go to meetings
I’m going to Adolph’s

Perhaps you do know Jack Shit
and in that light
I, sir, will be your Sancho Panza

You can sense that Lee has sat there in Garza County and just listened. Listened in the bars and the town council meetings and the cafes. He’s hunkered down in the buffalo grass at the ends of county roads and in the gravel of the school playground. There is a rhythm in these poems, a solemn plains note lifted with rumba.

listening to jazz, the morning sage and Raft River bank brush
bent frostquivering willowwhite
and the road kill breakfast club buzzards
flap flapping across my window like sleetwind
sky curdled into thunderbumpers
gas tank three quarters leaning on half
Miles slouched over my tiny mind
blowing Bye bye Blackbird
because I’m driving all alone

A few folks come and behold Willy John’s statue, to stand around it, ponder, and pontificate. Then la Bruja, “Eva Saenz Mendietta the Seer” sees a face half way up and states: “Veo la cara de la Virgen and all were sore amazed”. She whispers to Willy John’s father, “Cuidado, novio, if this gets out / it will no longer be a sculpture or monument / it will become a shrine. ?listo para eso?”

And so they do come, “the paisanos…by the pickup truckloads…until Willy John’s father”

had to build and plumb toilet facilities
put out fifty five gallon oil drums for garbage

then the word spread to the gringos
who came in station wagons in order to make damn sure

I read straight through this collection. Then turned right back to the first page and started over. As with most poetry, second readings reveal new insight, different shadings, like driving over old highways from Twin Falls, Idaho, say, down to Garza County, and then turning back around to see it all from a different perspective. Clovis makes that first leg of the drive in the poem titled “Driving Solo: Clovis Rants A Monologue in Five Acts with Intermission” as well as in “Interlude at McDonalds in Ely, Nevada, drinking coffee after filling up my truck with stagecoach-robbery priced diesel ten point two m.p.g.”

Long titles. There’s also:

"Substitute Teacher
or
The morning Billy Klogphorne taught the adolescent male Sunday School
class lesson on the designated Christian Leader Preparation
outline topic of Genesis 5: 18, 19 and 23, 24,
proving Lamech and polygamy were of the lineage of
Cain and therefore accursed of God
And
Why he was never invited back
to teach Sunday School again.”

The “Why” is partly because:

Brother Klogphorne
isn’t it adultery? and isn’t adultery a sin?

Young man
that is a wholly different topic
but in any case I do not believe it is necessarily so
Adultery is recreation.

There is that, and there is also the story elucidated to the Sunday school children about Brother Klogphorne’s stob that when invoked keeps his pants up. A story best kept to the imagination or to those so inclined to search out Mr. Lee’s book to ferret out the finer details of why he was never invited back to teach Sunday School.

And this:

Okay lay it on its side and turn it upside down
standing up so wegn get to the wheel
now you take a pair of pliars and a monkeyranch
you just uncrack that nut like this
loosen it up to where the wheel comes off
you don’t have to take the nut all the way off

So begins a lesson on fixing a flat tire on a bicycle meted out by Johnny Bert Ezell in his filling station “At the Sign of the Flying Red Horse” on a slow afternoon to young Monroe Newberry who’s no-account father hasn’t taken the time to teach his boy some of the more useful parts of life. Johnny Bert Ezell knows how to fix a flat tire. And he knows how to fix a car: you start with the easy stuff:

Lucy Beth
when a car won’t start
the first thing I’d do was check the fuel gauge
turn on the key and if the line don’t come up
it’s probley out of gas and that’s your problem

Too bad the car that wouldn’t start was not the reason Lucy Beth was there to see ol’ Elder Ezell. She did (as I did!) get a fine tutorial on troubleshooting a dead car…but nothing on what to do with a wayward husband.

Details. “now bend down over the fender for a sightline / and click the ignition one bump at a time / till the points come all the way open”.

Details. “Yougn lean over and examine the carburetor when the housing lid’s off”.

Hope. “I’ll bet two dollars to a doughnut / wegn get her done one way or anothern”.

These poems tell a story in sun-struck verse that is irreverent, ribald, and elegant. Words in the vernacular like “oncet” and “twicet” and “wegn” pepper the lines and flavor the world of Garza County. But Lee lets us not forget in the end, in the poem “Last Call,” that life is short and good honest friendship and admiration for lost friends can inspire verse that hums with perfect pleasure like a prairie wind through taut-strung bailing wire in the upper most reaches of a Monument to the South Plains.

And you my friend
whom the gods call
into that other alone

wherever you wake
be it desert or forest
mountain or seaside

find tinder
dry moss and kindling
flint

strike a small fire which
being eternity
will flicker beyond forever

sing
your bright poem
fork your lightning dance

I will find you
sooner than later wherever
you wait in the darkness

We will sing together
delirious and off key
We will tell great lies

to shame the heavens
We will cook with wine
I promise you this

[Richard Downey · Rating 5 out of 5]

David Lee is a unique voice in american poetry. I love it. Nothing more to say!

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful