Roy Bentley

Roy Bentley has published 11 books of poetry. He 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. He’s received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council (6 times), and the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs. Poems have appeared in New Letters, Prairie Schooner, december, Rattle, The Southern Review, Crazyhorse, and Shenandoah.

Best Lies Are Mostly True

Like lies about freedom Americans tell themselves,
our need to believe The Better Story that inordinate.
Lies are the libraries filled with delusional thinking
around the Human Spirit—if there is such a thing.
I told my first lie as a child. To a neighbor lady
concerning her son’s broken toy-Winchester.
And was believed. Adulterers lie. And why?
Because if it isn’t worth lying for, then it—

the Sex, having been guilty of adultery—
isn’t worth having. Come to think of it,
it’s like freedom. Turns out, we’re all liars.
You must’ve lied to a child, telling him or her
or them of Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny.
Politicians lie. And some more than others.
As early as when they first yawn-open their
mouths in the morning, in the case of Trump:

Trump is, basically, as American as apple pie
with a wisp of whipped cream or a la mode.
Lies for breakfast lunch dinner dessert. Lies
so far-fetched you’re an idiot to believe them.
Let me soldier on, so to speak—professional
soldiers, in any conflict, lie about what the
mission is, knowing War is an assemblage
of dishonesties, national identities contingent

on false narratives agreed upon like the loads
of lighted signage in a dark world. In addition,
mendacities are to be expected on nights lovers
choose to spend themselves, repeatedly; though
not primarily in the service of huge skies of stars.
Truth is in the skin, nonetheless. There. On the lips.
Best lies are mostly true, the spy says of secrets.
But then, we all give up everything in the end.