Scooch

PoetryVol. 3 No. 2
Written By Roy Bentley

The lower I scooch, the better the reception.
Like the signal’s intensity is what it is except
around me. We’re watching The Rockford Files
in my father-in-law’s recreational vehicle in a
private drive in Ft. Lauderdale, James Garner /
Jim Rockford handing out uber-macho lectures.
It’s 1980. I’m a new dad and reading Faulkner
for a class. I catch the politics of calling women
Honey. The woman in tennis whites has framed
Rockford for felony murder. Her navel, an innie,
packs loads of social import before its vanishing.
Arthur Dixon, my kind father-in-law, stands. He
steps to the antenna. Now he’s motioning Scooch,
Jim Rockford smart-mouthing his way to triumph,
the rest of our family inside the house or at church.
This evening, Arthur loves his battery-powered TV,
asks if I like Florida. I say, Positively, as Rockford
calls up William Faulkner in a ’74 Firebird Esprit,
skillfully spinning a steering wheel—like America
is okay just fine but you need to be willing to, well,
scooch down so you catch sight of the road ahead.

This piece was featured in Volume 3, Issue 2. Click here to explore other pieces from this issue.

Roy Bentley

Roy Bentley is the author of Walking with Eve in the Loved City, chosen by Billy Collins as a finalist for the Miller Williams 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. Poems have appeared in The Southern Review, New Letters, Laurel Review, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, Crazyhorse, Pleiades, North American Review, RATTLE, and elsewhere. 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. (Headshot art by Gloria)

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