Roy Bentley
After Hope
If the loss of hope were a country, it’d be this one. And
for a while, you would have Wi-Fi. A menu of rock ‘n roll.
The myriad behaviors of cottonwood leaves in noon light.
Love-approximately might still be trial-and-error answered
with that knowing smile won in the College of Heartbreak.
No one said it would be easy to live with your fellows,
but at least there’s some time to consider a few things.
And I think there’s sliced salami you like in the fridge
and enough wheat bread to make a sandwich. You’ll
soon understand how fucked you are and dismiss it—
Sandy Langford sent me letters in basic training.
Once she scented the envelope with her perfume.
Our TI was some short Airman First Class with
a Napoleon Complex, and I’m a tallish hillbilly,
so he commenced waving the aromatic love letter
around. Sniffing it. Sticking his pinkish tongue out
and having a bit of fun at my expense. The laughter
in the barracks was friendly, and the TI did ultimately
hand over Sandy’s letter. But with a big, mock smooch.
That was the letter in which she said she wanted to see
other people. And in the Air Force in Texas back then,
they called letters like that Dear Johns. Nevertheless,
for a while after, I heard the wolf whistles in my sleep.
I saw Sandy’s blue-eyed Look of Worship turn away.
The TI had wagged the letter like a flag of battle—
like a standard-issue Middle Finger to the Mystery.
After hope, it turns out, at least in the Air Force,
you have everything that came before. If lucky,
something scented with an echoing loss of love,
the sting of which may linger for fifty years or so.
A daft little piece of American Theater in which
you starred for a moment, or at least costarred.
“I’ve felt the disappointment that attends someone choosing not to love you. Whether an intimate relationship or our relationship to the group, I see that painful set of moments as a metaphor for what many Americans feel they’ve been forced to endure of late. The word disappointment strains to include the humiliation and scarring.” —Roy Bentley
Roy Bentley is the author of Walking with Eve in the Loved City, chosen by Billy Collins as finalist for the Miller Williams Poetry Prize; Starlight Taxi, winner of the Blue Lynx Poetry Prize; The Trouble with a Short Horse in Montana, chosen by John Gallaher as winner of the White Pine Poetry Prize and Boy in a Boat (University of Alabama), which was selected for the University of Alabama Press Poetry Series. He has received a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, six Ohio Arts Council fellowships, and a Florida Division of Cultural Affairs fellowship.