~
Smile, Charlie Chaplin, Modern Times, 1936
He tells his cohort who asks Why keep on trying?
that things always work out for the better, given time.
This, after his deadpan improvisations redefining Loss
as the putting on of boots over despotic, phantom socks.
The Little Fellow is delusional about his country—which
he trusts not to spit out its citizenry like the eucharist after
the death of faith. I want to believe all the jargon-gibberish
about God and American capitalism, and how the triumph
over oppression starts with standing upright at a roadside.
If it’s true we must act as if our liberation is everywhere,
an angel-faced Charlie almost levitates as his comrade
gets up and then strides the fuck out of the nightmare.
Her look is a glass through which we see this world.
His tip of the hat is a tell that armies will answer.
~
Roy Bentley, a finalist for the Miller Williams prize for Walking with Eve in the Loved City, has published 8 books; including American Loneliness from Lost Horse Press, who just published a new & selected: My Mother’s Red Ford. He is the recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the NEA, and fellowships from the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs and Ohio Arts Council. Poems have appeared in Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel Journal, The Southern Review, Crazyhorse, Rattle and Shenandoah among others. Hillbilly Guilt, his latest collection of poems, won the 2019 Hidden River Arts / Willow Run Poetry Book Award.