Roy Bentley
BILLY POTTER IN DAYTON, OHIO IN THE SUMMER OF 1962
I’m the swollen-faced hillbilly on a payphone at the end of the bar.
The scarecrow-thin man hollering for brother-in-law Roy to bring
his .38 pistol. I’m leaving the phone, stepping through a door into
a men’s room where a pair of dazed and confused floor-huggers
settle against opposite walls. They breathe heavily, one coughs.
I’m thinking Roy, the raised voice on the other end of the call,
not that far off, at my sister’s place in Kettering, will show up
outside in the parking lot of this bar where I’m serving notice.
I want to wrap up this soliloquy about needing to think twice
before you try and rob a man who works for a living. Before
hijacking a briar hopper’s brand-new Chevy, taking his wallet.
This one’s for Kennedy, Congress. And here, Mister Shit: this
one’s for my brother Earl who your-kind shot. Left for dead.
Here’s another for Ed, dead and buried, my brother backshot
because chickenshit cocksuckers feared the truth of his fists.
About how many blows do you suppose it takes to kill a man?
How many before I know little else but to keep at the work?
Mister, you look like you’re close to the limit. You look like
maybe you see Jesus from that place on the floor. If I were
you, I’d ask for forgiveness. My pistol will be here soon.
WHERE DOES THE TIME GO? ASKED THE DROWNING WATCHMAKER
That was the caption I put on the photograph of Dave Smith
standing in the Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band glow
of the 70s, a hillside shot from photographer Terry Hummer,
on the cover of a forty-year-old American Poetry Review—
same Dave Smith took me to a Triple-A baseball game
in Richmond. If there’s a God in Heaven, Dave—a dark
beauty along the lines of Salman Rushdie’s ex, maybe?—
I’m asking her, God, to give back nineteen seventy-nine.
If you don’t want it, Dave, you can take it up with Her.
But I’d like to wander into that house of yours in Athens,
the two-storey with a more-than-questionable leaning wall.
Anyway, I’d take you in a door. Show you APR lying out
with a face, young, shining from the cover. I’d show you
for the reason that Time knocks the shit out of all of us
sometimes. Maybe things were good or pretty good then.
I’ll likely never forget what Time was doing to that wall.
A finalist for the Miller Williams prize, Roy Bentley has published ten books of poetry. His work has appeared in NAR, Shenandoah, Blackbird, december, Crazyhorse, The Southern Review, and Prairie Schooner among others. His latest collection, Beautiful Plenty, is available from Main Street Rag.