News from Down to the Cafe

David Lee

Stories overheard at the local “Wayburne Pig Cafe,” these poems capture a rural community’s own voice, peppered with gossip and arguments right off Main Street. Moving slightly away from the “pig poems” which have engaged so many readers, News from Down to the Cafe finds Lee more lyrical, gentle, and reflective than in previous works, yet once again his characters are heartbreaking, hilarious, and unfailingly entertaining.

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ISBN: 9781556591327

Format: Paperback

Conversation Overhead from a Back Booth on a Tuesday Afternoon After a Weekend Storm

1

“That man sitting beside you
last night at the party
what a nice man he was.”
“Oh, Mama. Mama that man
he loves me. I think a lot.”
“Yes baby girl. Surely
I did know that.”

2

When I was a girlchild
oncet and I was
when Daddy worked in the mine
he brought all his possibles
and responsibilities home on the porch
for us not to touch on a weekend
that the Lord made for pure pleasure

it was on a Friday passing
into Saturday morning
after him being away all week a miner
making dreamplay in their room
all that house breathing love
and a whole live grown-up man
walking in a part of my mind
I didn’t think my mama
knew about either
in the night

I had to go out on the porch
alone with him in the midnight
with a giant storm throbbing
all around and inside
so I had to sit down
on Daddy’s box from the mine
I didn’t find out until tomorrow
was dynamites for the blasting

it was a wonderful
terrible storm that summer night
whole sky and house filled
with fire and thunder from all the gods
my body drenched with rain and sweat
until my nightgown held on to me
like love itself

I sat alone
with the shadows after the storm walked on
breathing in all the rainwallowed hay
and the yard and Mama’s roses
opened and shed across the garden
glistening in the dreamlight
the whole live world exploded
and brought back together
by what happened
to us all, baby girl,
in the storm that night

About the Author

David Lee was Utah’s first poet laureate; in 2001 he was a finalist for United States Poet Laureate. He is the author of two dozen volumes of poetry, including The Porcine Canticles, A Legacy of Shadows, So Quietly the Earth, Last Call, and Mine Tailings. A former seminary student, semi-pro baseball player, and hog farmer, he holds a PhD with a concentration in John Milton. For over three decades he taught at Southern Utah University, where he received every teaching …

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Reviews

“Lee joins the ranks of Frost and Hayden Carruth as poets whose treatment of rural life in lines cast in genuine vernacular goes far beyond what we often mean by ‘regional poetry’.” —The Year in Poetry, 1999

“[News from Down to the Cafe] brings us more of Lee’s unpretentious, open and generous take on his countryfolk and country.” —Publishers Weekly

“News from Down to the Cafe… demonstrates [Lee’s] strong ear and his genius for narrative.” —Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook