by David Lee
give you something to do at church during the sermon
How’d you know that? said D’Wayne Newberry
I’m not blind I seen you trying
now yougn get it accomplished
impress your girlfriend and boys
I haven’t got no dollar on me
How much you got?
I don’t know
let me see
quarter thirty five forty fifty five fifty seven cents
Tell you what
just today I’ll give you a special deal
I’ll redeem this here sharpened pocket knife to you
for fifty seven cents and to ease my conscience over the usury
I’ll put that money in the collection plate this Sunday
as long as you’ll make me a promise
What?
You’ll buy your boy Monroe a patch kit
and teach him how to fix his own flat tire
from now on and if he doesn’t learn it
next time it’ll be a dollar fifty so that makes it a even better deal
you’ll be saving yourself a whole dollar and four bits then
you think you can do that?
I dunno
maybe
he don’t learn things too quick
Well, neither do you
but I hope so anyways now give me fifty seven cents
and yougn have this two dollar sharpened knife
we’ll call it even
I suppose
somehow this don’t seem right
I think you’re taking a vantage of me
I’ll have to thank about it but I might need that pocketknife
I guessed I don’t have no choice
Nope, not today but you do for next time
I do?
Yep
you teach that boy how to take care of his equipment
it’s gone save you a whole lot of money
time and trouble in the long run
I guarantee you that for a fact
so in that light you actually got a real bargain
you can be proud of negotiating
I hope the rest of your day goes real good for you
and that sharpened pocket knife makes you a good one
and for that boy of yours Monroe who incidentally
needs to be coming to my Sunday School class
at ten o’clock sharp this weekend
I hope you catch my drift
Bye now
say hey to that boy Monroe
San Antonio Incident
Jerry Ray Newman on family vacation
ran half a block down the street
to the closest public pay phone
when the Operator said Number please
he said Can yall send a amblance
down here real quick
my mama she’s hurt purdy good?
Can you tell me how she’s hurt?
Walking down the street
here come this big goddam sowbitch
jalapeno pig with babies
her being a fleshy woman
she couldn’t run as fast as the rest of us
it caught her and mault her real bad
she’s a bleeding like a sieve
on that one leg
What is the location?
Right down the street from the motel
where we’re staying at
Can you give me an address?
What’s the address, Daddy?
he says it’s 4th street and Rhododendron
Could you please spell that?
Wait. Hey Daddy
Okay, we’ll carry her piggyback
up a block to 4th street and Fir
that’s F, I, R
she’s a hollering in a embarrassing manner
Daddy said could you ask that amblance
to get here in a hurry?
Driving Solo: Clovis Rants A Monologue in Five Acts with Intermission
I am but mad north-northwest: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw
—Shakespeare, Hamlet
1
Good windy day morning ladies and all you
notsowannabe gentlemen buckaroos
for the Pulitzer-level literati
it’s going to be a Captain Call’s half-broke wild mare romp
a genuine frost breath horrible tempered mean rodeo bucker
you’d rather milk than ride day
swirling winds out of the south 30 to 35 upwards
gusts running right up to the 60’s, cloudy with highs in the low 40’s
dropping
you stay inside right here with KJZZ
we’ll play you some windy day jazz tunes
stay saddled up right here to get you through the soaring sand dunes
we’ll buck you right to the moon
the man in his own words said at six o’clock this very morning
and I’m driving alone without Jan down the slurry seal into Jackpot,
Nevada
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
2
because I’m driving all alone
five hundred and thirty-seven more miles
to where I’ll sleep tonight
and thirteen hundred more before I hit
the Hill Country in three days running
down the road listening to my new storeboughten Jackpot
Greatest All Time Jazz cassette
out of the dollar sale bin at Cactus Pete’s gift shop
Jan behind me in Twin Falls, Idaho nursing
her bellyache mother through another season’s
episode of whatever she’s dreamed up
to be going around this time
me heading across the sagebrush backside
of Nevada about a hundred and three miles
from godforgotten Ely down to a half tank
into yessir Mr. D. J., an exactly HellBitch headwind
blowing slantwise out of Nogales, Mexico
elegant Duke giving over to raucous Dizzy
shifting down to Blue Train granny gear in a fifty mile stretch
rattling my pickup like a snaredrum
pushing the beat across Coltrane’s
and my, too, fried brain
3
driving through the desert hurricane
down the road straight south
listening to jazz by myself
approaching the intersection of the designated
Loneliest Highway in America
gas tank now down to one third
twelve miles per gallon dropping by the lurch
looking square across to the quarter line
range cows with washboard ribs
standing butt to the nettlewind bawling
like the last bellhounds at the end of time
Dizzy reappearing to tell me
we all play the same notes
the way I get from one note to the next
that’s my style
and there’s not a single thing I can do
out here in the wasteland but nod
and hold the truck on the road
in my tightfisted style
right up to the red insanity mark line
I can’t break concentration
to argue with my man
acknowledging pissed off as I am
with the circumstances
what I’m giving is all I’ve got
Interlude at McDonalds in Ely, Nevada, drinking coffee after filling up my truck with stagecoach-robbery priced diesel ten point two m.p.g.
shadebaked wind children outside th
e fast-food walls
finger and nose prints pressed into windowpeeped glass
tiny hands beating against the invisible boundary
between light and light demand entrance
suddenly
eruption of a camperpickupload of tarheel cotton sack ragamuffin
tumbleweeds interrupted from their long southwind roll
to the Oregon border where they might chance align
against a snowdrift fence awaiting castcall
for the Hell’s Canyon remake of Deliverance
pour into McDonalds, roiling and clamormongering
this one okay, mama? if it’s white people serving I’ll eat here
elbow their way forward shouting immediate service demands
what you wanting, mama? you shut up, Billy Don
I aint done reading the dollar menu yet
humming
a Bill Evans riff I accept my refill from the young
Ronalda apprentice and while turning to the door
whisper as loudly as humanly possible best deal in town
four cream senior coffee half price
mama’s scream
where does it say that? Billy Don go get him
make him come back and show me whar it’s at
I move into sharpwind toward my truck to begin again
driving the road alone listening to jazz
Billy Don
screaming to the glass pane wait come back heah
my mama wants you too late, cracker-buddy
I’m on my way
out of Ely with love and squalor
walking along minding my own business with my hot
cuppacoffee on the one way path to my pickup, me
I’m getting myself ready to start the last half of this trip
over with once and for sonofabitching all
4
driving down the road listening to jazz
wishing my wife would once and for all
absolutely, ultimately and irrevocably
finally tell her mama she’s got a life of her own
fists of wind beating all about
the head and shoulders of my beat up Dodge truck
knocking it across the road like a spent heavyweight pug
and now Humbolt Pass with a foot of new snow
my thermostat shot to Gehenna or Sheol or Dis or dat and back
heater blowing air as cold as a Newfoundlander’s
proverbial shithouse in its archetypal Hades or Acheron
like I know my damned room will be
when I get there in about five and a half hours
alone with Billy Holiday singing me
her personal inspired version of
It aint no love in this town you heading to tonight
driving straight south to hell
or Pioche, whichever comes first
5
on the road listening to jazz
the sun falling like winter sky
horizon imploding into a thousand square miles
of juniper and beercans and roadkill
turning left and heading east at Panaca
I say out loud thank you Lord that’s done and over with
this last hundred has to be the easy stretch
we’ve both been waiting on
but the wind the goddammed wind
that never blows out of the east
I’d promised myself
not once in the history of civilized mankind
I’d heard of in this part of the world twists
shouts and rattles its way ninety degrees larboard
laughs and shrieks like a banshee windowpeeking
at a senior rehabilitation center viva voce
everything out here screaming awful
how loud and alone just dammed alone the whole world is
and I have a frosty ninety four
windstarved miles to go before I sleep
Charlie Parker telling me personally
what I need is some good windy day lonesome blues
what else on earth do I have left to lose
driving myself down the end of the world road
home to Texas without Jan, listening to jazz
The First Miracle
came to pass when Eva Saenz Mendietta the Seer
some called la Bruja visited the monument
with her family and closely inspected
Willy John’s sculpture until her vision
rested upon a spot just above the juncture
Willy John’s father designated the half way mark
she closed her eyes for almost three minutes
when she opened them pointed at the indentation and said
Veo la cara de la Virgen and all were sore amazed
Willy John’s dad who had known Eva Saenz
for almost fifty years even before
she became Mendietta moved to her side
followed her point to the mark and saw
what could be taken as the image of a face
in the rusted metal and proclaimed Well
Eva turned and whispered You see?
and he said Si, comprendo lo que dices
Muy bien she said and then told her family
It is time for us to go, vamanos muchachos
Willy John’s father said Eva, mi amor, you know
you’re welcome to come back any time you want
she said softly, Cuidado, novio, if this gets out
it will no longer be a sculpture or monument
it will become a shrine ?listo para eso?
Ready as I’ll ever be this time he said
I will come back she said, Yes
Aftermath Evaluation from a Pickup Window
If that’s posta be art
I’d like to know what the hell is it
It looks exactly like the ghost
of a burnt out drilling rig said John Sims
Why you think that?
I been in a oil well fire
that’s something I know something about
That and ghosts
First Miracle Redux
and the paisanos came to venerate
by the pickup truckloads
many bringing picnic baskets
to stay the afternoon 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
none of them could ever see a face anywhere
in that stack of piled up scrapjunk
in spite of their best well-intended efforts
many did see the visage after Willy John’s father
pointed it out and after he told them
how it could be seen in noonlight and moonlight
how it changed with the changing of the light
he had to put a gate on the road into his property
to keep teenagers out on full moon nights
and then the day when Reverend Coy Stribling
of the Church of God of Prophesy of Holy and Divine Revelation
came to bear witness and tried to follow
the pointline but seemed to be looking
about six feet above said I seen it
I believe that could be the face of Jesus Christ hisself
which was revealed unto me when I was fourteen
when a woman said Reverend Coy
It’s posta be a face of the Virgin is what they say it is
he said It aint no virgins except in the Bible
but they been gone from the world a long time ago
when he offered to hold a church service
there on Sunday next For a official dedication
Willy John’s daddy said Nope Sorry
we’ll keep it secular this time around
and Reverend Coy waxed sore amazed at the turn down
thre
e days later Eva Saenz Mendietta called
to tell Willy John’s father
how sorry she was that happened
sometimes she wished she really were a witch
she’d cast a spell to make Coy go away permanently
or maybe one to give him an actual mind
in the place his brain was supposed to be
Willy John’s daddy told her he sometimes thought
Jesus got it wrong in the Beatitudes when he said
The meek shall inherit the earth
when all too often it was like the boilings
when they used to make lye soap
always the scum floated to the top
Substitute Teacher
or
The morning Billy Klogphorne taught the adolescent male Sunday School class lesson on the designated Christian Leader Preparation outline topicof 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
Boys
or should I say young Christian Leaders
potential Deacons of God’s true church
I have little to say regarding today’s topic
not being familiar with canonized rites of exegesis
therefore this may be a brief experience
in fact the following is potentially the sum of what
I have to say on the matter of Lamech and his wives
Bigamy or polygamy is a crime
That is a fact upon which I will briefly postulate
In a terribly over-populated world it is an inexcusable act
of poor manners, selfishness and stupidity
I do not know if it is a sin
but I cannot imagine or countenance
believing in a Texan god who would condone
much less encourage it
or a Texas woman who would tolerate it
That is my analysis and opinion
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
however, it is dangerous contact sport
recreation practiced by all of humanity
normally based upon a lie and because of the lie
it may or not be sin
Brother Klogphorne
isn’t lying a sin?
Not always young proselyte
There are categories of both sin and lie
to which all poets and piddlers are exempt
by fact of diplomatic and professional immunity
and all politicians guilty