Last Call Read Online Free PDF Page B

churchhouse proselytization
    that will linger in these boys’ memory for up to nine seconds
    then flow down to this community
    unadulterated and abridged for time immemorial
    and if that is the resultant actuality
    I will leave this earth a delighted and thankful man
    Amen
    Now you boys have yourselves a real nice Sunday
    endeavoring to persevere in the effort
    not to squirm or squiggle in your pews
    but give your devoted attention to matters
    of behavioral hegemony and high consequence
    * * *
    Did you understand that? said Roy Don Staples
    I didn’t understand nothing
    but that part after Sodom and Gomorrah said Jarvis Griggs
    It’s Sunday School, you’re not posta understand it yet said Bobby Hudman
    I don’t think it was pure scriptural said Charles Ivins
    How do you know? said Walter Bloodworth
    I know it in my heart said Charles Ivins
    You don’t know Jack Shit said Monroe Newberry
    You caint say that in the churchhouse said Roy Don Staples
    Nah uh said Monroe Newberry
    Yes I do said Charles Ivins
    * * *
    Billy Klogphorne strode
    from classroom to apse to
    aisle to mispronounced foyer
    through the church house front door
    drove home without an acknowledgment
    of sermon or scripture or hymnsinging or prayers
    or communion or mandatory collection plate passage
    his job as substitute Sunday School mentor and Professor
    completed indubitably terse, thorough and Texas true
    his lesson to the male youth of Garza County taught
    his etched inscription into the permanent memory
    of our community established satisfactorily
    finally, indelibly, permanently
    once and by god for all
    amen

Lost in Translation a monologue from the pickup cab
    That year I’m thinking about
    the popular bubblegum set-in-Italy
    movie of the season had Troy Donahue
    having overthrown and tossed away
    Sandra Dee with the summer’s morning garbage
    a venal and moral sin of an unforgivable nature
    to the unsophisticated and uninitiated
    post-pubescent likes of moi, in which he,
    courting unabashedly Suzanne Pleshette
    I believe, and whilst so doing
    used the term
al di la
Troy-translated
    as
beyond the beyond
that being I suppose
    a Swahili or Reformed Egyptian term of endearment
    certainly not Italian or technical Romantic
    upon finding the current operable
    teenage love of a lifetime
    with such linguistic power it secured
    an immediate and for some Young Republicans
    lifetime addiction to the expression
    so that:
    every Texas girls’ 1962 high school annual
    was signed
All de Lah
by the current
    or aspiring suitor to which there was a clamor
    of tearstruck emotional overthrow
    at any female suitee gathering of the clavern
    for purposes of stratification alignment
    of eternal phylogynous commitment with an expiration warranty
    of 1 June, some assembly required
    by all those both signed and unsigned in that manner
    which:
    directly leads me to the matter
    of contemporary reflective personal poignancy
    ergo my undeclared adoration that very season
    for the senorita bonita Eva Saenz
    to and for whom I refused usage of
al di la
    already in my self-proclaimed maturity
    deemed trite to the shaven rimrock of cliché
    whereupon I cast about for an appropriate
    foreign, exotic and to the 10th power romantic
    term of endearment
    Â Â Â Â Â Â but
    having poor personal macaronics in my equipage
    I by force of choice turned to a source
    of higher wisdom upon which and whence
    I trundled to my friend and her brother Gabriel Saenz
    who suspected my infatuation with the lovely Eva
    and queried him for the exact Spanish or Mexican
    poetic maxim I should use to win
    her undying love for a lifetime
    Â Â Â Â upon which
    he told me not
te quiero
as that profession
    must come much later after I had secured her heart
    but that the
te
and familiar tense would certainly
    create an atmosphere of reciprocity
    therefore
    after a long eight seconds spent in heavy ponderation
    he opined
    I will give you an amorous