In one borough of a city nearly out of surgical masks,
a jazz station repeats like the dream of a better country.
Doctors and nurses labor around the clock, dictating
a Last Will & Testament between critically-ill patients—
given who we are as Americans, the respirator-rhythm
alleges we triumph or perish one grim breath at a time.
In nineteen fifty-four, the April of the year I was born,
no one in my family understood what an aerophone is
or that it fits in the woodwind family, given that a reed
is used to vibrate columns of air released. Nevertheless,
dancers prized Lester Young because he would blow
a tenor sax and sexualize All Creation: Lester heard
health and well-being and long life glide across a riff,
Oscar Peterson on the baby grand, redefining Lovely.
Roy Bentley, a finalist for the Miller Williams prize for Walking with Eve in the Loved City, has published eight books; including American Loneliness from Lost Horse Press, who is bringing out a new & selected. He is the recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and fellowships from the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs and the Ohio Arts Council. His poems have appeared in Cleaver, The Southern Review, Crazyhorse, and Shenandoah among others. Hillbilly Guilt, his latest, won the Hidden River Arts / Willow Run Poetry Book Award and will appear next year.
