News from Down to the Cafe: New Poems

by David Lee

Overview

These poems are rooted in stories overheard at the Wayburne Pig Cafe. They capture a rural community's true voice, peppered with gossip and arguments right off Main Street. Moving away from the "pig poems" which have delighted so many readers, News ?nds Lee more lyrical, gentle, and re?ective than in previous works, yet once again his characters are heartbreaking, hilarious, and unfailingly entertaining.

"Reading Lee's poetry is like sitting on a wide porch in the summer with a favorite uncle you don't see often and listening to him ramble along with tales of the local townsfolk. Lee captures the grit and authenticity of 'country' speech… Recommended."-Library Journal

David Lee was the subject of a recent PBS documentary, The Pig Poet. Winner of the 1995 Western States Book Award, Lee has also been the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He lives in St. George, Utah.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781556591327
Publisher:	Copper Canyon Press
Publication date:	09/01/1999
Pages:	144
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

David Lee, author of eight books of poetry, was Utah's first Poet Laureate. A former seminary candidate, semi-pro baseball player, and hog farmer, he has a Ph.D. with a concentration in Milton and is the recently retired head of the Languages and Literature department at Southern Utah University.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

    Wayburne Pig

Cafe where we used to eat was called Wayburne Pig
it wasn't always that but that's how we knew it
it got named that before B.L. Wayburn
beat up Wesley Stevens' new used pickup
with a baseball bat and then
when he come back with his daughter with the big ears
he taken and shot holes in the tires with his pistol
and Red Floyd sed he better retire and move
or they'd have to arrest him and take him to court
even if they didn't blame him one bit
because even before that was when
B.L. Wayburn got them two ugly daughters
of his raised and married
after his third wife run off with a deputy sheriff to Arkansas
and that one boy through highschool
without having to go to the penitentiary
so he sold his cafe and went to farming
sed he was through having to listen to people all day
for the time being and smell grease frying
bought this nice piece of land
spent a backseat full of money
on chainlink fence and concrete floors
for the farrowing sheds
went all over to Missouri he sed to buy
these pureblood Chester White hogs
so he could have the best pigfarm he ever seen
used up all that cafe money
some sed it was because he missed them girls
after they went and left but I didn't think so
or he would of bought Blackshires
with them smashed-up faces
otherns thought he's just putting on airs
some of them pigs cost almost as much money
as God has to be papered hogs
they all guaranteed to not have no disease
and be without worms
hewas gone do it right for oncet
and would everbody leave him the hell alone
he was sick and tired of people
and all their humanities
he just wanted to raise hogs by himself

he did good at first without any advice
only lost about all his investment that first year
built his herd up to fifty sows and three boars
he's so proud of those hogs he ordered a sign made
that sed Wayburn's Pigs with a picture of a Chester White
on it to go out by the road in front
but then Wesley Stevens had these two sows come in
it wasn't nothing he'd think of doing
but getting them pigs in there
to one of B.L. Wayburn's papered boars
everbody known Wayburn had sed his place
was closed to all hogs for breeding
and he didn't want to buy any pigs for feeders
he was gone keep all the disease off his land
he wanted a clean herd
so Wesley Stevens loaded those two sows of his up drove out to his place
in his old Studebaker pickup
right out to the loading chute
with a lock on it so nobody could do just that
he was trying to tear it off
with a tire tool when B.L. Wayburn ran out
sed What in the hell are you doing?
Wesley Stevens sed I brung my hogs
to get bred to your Chestnut White papered boar
get this goddam lock off this loading chute
I haven't got no time to stand here waiting
my hogs is ready right now they slobbering
go get that boar in a hurry

Wesley Stevens' pigs had rhinitis so bad
one's nose was almost looking in its ear
and the other had to eat on one side
of its mouth like its face busted
they were ugly black listed sows
so skinny you could tell
they'd have worms nine foot long
and he fed them dead animals and horses
you wouldn't taste a bite of his sausage
if he offered to pay you five dollars
because you knew the only ones he butchered
were ones that died in their pen
he sold them that lived to Jackson Meat
we didn't eat a whole lot of storebought pig back then

B.L. Wayburn sez Nosir you are not
unloading them two sows on my place
or breeding them to my papered boar
you get in your truck and get off my property
Wesley Stevens put his nose
right in B.L. Wayburn's face sed
What kind of a goddam neighbor are you
you sonofabitch? look in that truck
I done loaded them hogs up all morning
they aint leaving this place till they done bred
and that's a fact
or I'll burn your goddam house down
I won't even wait till night to do it
you don't want to be a good neighbor
you sell out and leave right now
he spit all over B.L. Wayburn's face
mad and hollering like he's deaf in both ears
or was a Mexican who couldn't speak any language
those two hogs so sick with rhinitis
they'd have to stop and rest
walking down an eight-foot loading chute
blowing foam and snot like a bellows
with a hole in the leathers
So what you gone do about it now? he sed
before B.L. Wayburn could even tell him
he'd go call Sheriff Red Floyd by god
Wesley Stevens sed I expected better
of a man that might be my in-law purdy soon

you couldn't have got his attention better
if you'd shot him in the head with a bootlegger's pistol
his mouth flung open
you could have scraped down his eyeballs
with a fingernail rile
Wesley Stevens sed That girl of mine's carrying
your grandbaby in her belly right now
so I figger you owe me
till we get them two to the churchhouse
then we'll talk about setting up partners

if you threw a stick on the ground
that daughter of his would have it
before it bounced and be knocked up
she'd already had three kids
and run off a town council
Piggly Wiggly's butcher and a Presbyterian preacher
nobody could have told why any one of them
would come around her
she's so awful looking they sed you'd have to bring
a flour sack to put over her head
even then the front of it would stick to you
where she drooled through
and her ears would poke out on both sides
like it was a mule or milkcow under there
but it was a lie and Wesley Stevens knew it
that boy hadn't been with her since last year
after graduation from highschool
with the football team
we all sed later that might have been too bad
as ugly as those Wayburns were
if them two had kids
we could have closed down the picture show
and saved the money for something to look at
to go with Charley Baker's idiots

B.L. Wayburn ran that cafe so long
he knew how to think and still talk
he sed Look here right now
I've got this one boar I don't need no more
or I'll be using him on his daughters
why don't we just load him up
I'll sell him to you today?
Wesley Stevens sed Is he a papered Chestnut White
I won't have no sorry breeding stock
or no Yorktown hogs on my place
he sed Yas he is I guarantee him for that
Wesley Stevens sez No then I don't believe I can afford him
B.L. Wayburn sed I'll give him to you
Wesley Stevens sez But it cost money to feed him
like the manner he's been custom to
he sed I'll give you 400 pounds of feed to take him
Wesley Stevens sez What about
all my trouble loading up them hogs
and the gas and damages on my truck?
he sez All right
I'll thrown in fifteen dollars cash
that's all I have on me today
Wesley Stevens sez Well if that's the best you can do
so they went and got that Chester White boar
B.L. Wayburn had paid almost 500 dollars for
and loaded it up in Wesley Stevens' Studebaker truck
with 400 pounds of storebought pigfeed
them two sows torn open and ruint
before he even got off Wayburn's place
ascairt that papered boar so bad
they thought he'd climb up those stockracks
to get away but he couldn't
he was stuck for good
Wesley Stevens had what he wanted so he was satisfied
B.L. Wayburn had only one thing to find out
and that was where in the hell
that boy of his was right then

everthing could have been all right
that boy got arrested for breaking in to the highschool
and pouring all the library books on the floor
for something to do on a night
they sed he could go to the army
for three years instead of a trial
B.L. Wayburn thought it was an act of God
he never found out if that Stevens girl
was pregnant to his boy or not
he wouldn't listen to any talk about it
his one ugly girl got divorced with two kids
moved back in and he almost had
the othern's marriage ruint to her husband
when Wesley Stevens brought that boar back
and unloaded him in the hogpasture half a year later

if he'd been kin to you
you couldn't have recognized that pig
he never weighed about half what he did
when he left home that day
looked like a hippopotamuses' head
stuck on a six-foot Viennie sausage
he couldn't even curl his tail up in a knot
Wesley Stevens done bred him
to every hog in the county for fifteen dollars
or a live pig second pick of the litter
he was done worn out for ever
couldn't have got him up on a sow with a comealong
there he stood in that field
with his head down ruint
snorting and blowing blood and snot out of his nose
like he's dying of the pneumonia

that same day his sign for the pigfarm came
man unloaded it by the house and got his money
from that one girl of his living there and left
before they looked at it to see
he'd spelt it all wrong with a e
and no s on it nowhere
painted a picture of a damn Yorkshire pig on it
with its ears sticking straight up
B.L. Wayburn might as well have been
a Jersey milkcow staring at her first milking machine
at that sign and then that ruint boar
all he could say all morning was
I'll be goddamed
we figured he might have been right that time
put that sign in his garage and shut the door
had to take that boar out and shoot him with his pistol
dug a hole with a tractor and buried him
so the disease wouldn't leak out

it was too late
a year later every hog on his place
had the rhinitis
you could hear them snorting and sucking
like a dry windmill looking for a prime
before you even got out of your truck
took more'n eight months
for the shoats to top out and almost twice the feed
nobody would touch his hogs
if they were looking for sows or feeders to buy
he was as ruint as that dead boar
his girls was so ascairt they went and hid
all the pistol bullets
sed he wouldn't even look out to see the hogs
every day he'd go to the garage
stare at that sign with the wrong pig on the picture
and the words not spelled right
them girls paid the auction to bring four big trucks
haul all the hogs off
sold them to Omaha for sausage at a terrible price
Wesley Stevens made enough
off that boar to buy him a new used pickup
and his girl moved in to town
so she could look for her a husband for those kids

B.L. Wayburn would have probley wasted away and died
except Irby at the bank called him
sed they had to take back that cafe
from those people he sold it to
they couldn't run it worth a damn
and would he be inarrested in a swap back
straight acrost for that hogfarm he bought
since he didn't have nothing to do again
for the time being anyway
and the town needed that cafe to be open

wasn't nothing he could do
but say Yessir without any choice
he had both ugly girls back with him by then
so he'd have them to do the work
while he ran cash register and coffee
till that boy got out of the army
then he could give it to him for a job to do
first thing he did was take and put
a paper in the window that sed
If you even think I might not like you
don't walk through this dam door
signed B.L. Wayburn, owner of this business
then he clumb on top and hung
that sign that was spelled wrong
up on the front of that cafe
with the picture of the Yorktown pig
that we all sed passed a resemblance
to those two daughters of his on it
we knew that was a lie
only one girl in town had big ears
that stuck out like that hog
but we never mentioned it to B.L. Wayburn
we were pretty sure he might have
had his pistol bullets back by then
besides it was just some waiting
till it all would come up to a gusher
we were happy for the time being to have a place
where we could go again for dinner or supper
to find a good hot ham sandwich to eat

Editorial Reviews

Lee's first book, The Porcine Legacy (1974), delineated the themes and style that he has investigated right up to his latest book. "Young feller," the Virgil-like "John" advises the poet in the Selected's opening "Loading a Boar," "if you wanna by god write pomes you gotta write pomes about what you know and not about the rest and you can write about pigs and that boar and Jan and you and me and the rest and there aint no way you're gonna quit." Lee has stuck to this idea, perhaps too closely, though with gestures toward variety. His irreverence is not as winning as, say, James Tate's, whom he sometimes resembles in his half-ironic, but never cynical, view of life, and displays none of Tate's formal inclinations. Quite often, the poems seem like magazine fiction mining a Prairie Home Companion-like vein. At his best, however, strains of Frost or Edgar Lee Masters come through clearly, as in the short but effective "Idyll" (also from the Selected), about "Charley Baker's idiot girl/ [...] picking dandelions/ [...] mind empty as sky," which ends: "No bother/ wind rooting her curls/ she was happy in the flowers/ waving half-acre handfuls/ of gold coins/ to the cars going by." The selections from 1996's Covenants show a fondness for long titles, and the poem "What Happened When Bobby Jack Cockrum Tried to Bring Home a Pit Bulldog, or, What His Daddy Said to Him That Day," is worthy of James Wright, another connoisseur of asymmetrical headers. News brings us more of Lee's unpretentious, open and generous take on his countryfolk and country--Lee lives in St. George, Utah, and is the state's poet laureate--but although his ear for speech is sharper than ever, and he renders it crisply on the page, most readers will want more than a diversionary visit with local color. (Aug.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

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