Lean Creatures Poems

by David Coy

This book contains forty-seven poems by David Lavar Coy, written in his forties, a chaotic period. They reflect actual life and work experiences such as growing up on Polecat Bench in Wyoming, working for the forest service, a friend's suicide and his own divorce. However, the poet is more interested in transforming his experience through his imagination then rendering a photographic image of it. He is trying to make the reader live the experience through his words. He definitely fictionalizes. Some of the poems come from Arkansas, Missouri, and Arizona as well as Wyoming. There are four groups of poems in the book, and each turns the subject in a new direction. In the first "Hair, Bone and Feather," the strongest theme is man's indifferent cruelty to animals, balanced with humor and love. The second group "Uncommon Ground" is largely about staying, leaving, inhabiting. The third group "For Love's Sake" is of course about love-- not shades of gray, but a spectrum of lyrical feelings. The fourth group, "Strays and Castaways" is not completely focused on one theme, but contemplates death. The mood was inspired by the suicide of a friend but does not embrace grimness. The poet is an optimist. He embraces life.

68 pages, Paperback

Published March 6, 2019

About the author

I’ve had a lifetime love of science fiction and horror. I suspect it started in puberty since most obsessions do. My passion for it was so strong as a youth that, young and penniless, I resorted to boosting copies of my favorite authors’ works off the shelves of the book section of the local Federal’s department store. My friends and I soon had a collection of great sci-fi at discounted prices to read and read again. But I’m not wholly without conscience about those shifty activities as a scrawny youth. I’ll shake my head from side to side and mumble “Crap, that was stupid” once every decade or so, but that’s about it.

I consider myself a sci-fi film Nazi. I’m sure I’ve seen every sci-fi movie ever made, or certainly the vast majority of them. I can’t pass up even the worst of it. All those god-awful, black and white B flicks of the 40’s onward, with their outrageous and ham-handed themes of science vs. ignorance and good vs. evil, wrapped in whatever pseudo-scientific covering was popular that year, transfixed me, entertained me, and like the works pinched then stashed in my friend’s basement, made me think. When pivotal films like “Alien” and John Carpenter’s “The Thing” elevated sci-fi film up out of the gutter with all those glorious and expensive production values, I was im himmel.

I attended Wayne State University in Detroit Michigan. Like so many of my peers at the time, I left Wayne State with an utterly useless BA with a major in psychology. I’ve cleaned tractor cranes for money and worked as a steel mill laborer when the last one of those plants in Michigan still existed. I’ve worked as a night janitor. I moved to southern California when I was 30 years old and sold cars for a while. Shortly thereafter I worked for what used to be called the Hughes Aircraft Company as an in-house photographer. For the last 10 years of my work-a-day life I worked as a senior project manager for Computer Sciences Corporation. I now live in Oregon where I started and recently sold a fitness gym. I relate this choppy history to drive home my favorite maxim relating to life and the living of it: you never know where in the fuck you’ll end up. You’ll find my books laced through with that persistent theme. I hope you find the journey of reading them, should you attempt it, if not straight and linear, at least interesting.