The Confederate flag
unfurls from the antenna
of my father’s ’32 Ford Coupe
replica—a fiberglass body with a rumble
seat on a ’72 Mustang chassis: 302 V-8 with
an automatic and standard brakes and nothing
like power steering, a recipe for disaster. But
his Old Kentucky Homeplace is in the Ford,

and this morning he wants to take my new son
Matt, his first grandchild, to the Shear Shoppe
for a first haircut. We all have our demons.
Most of mine have to do with having stopped
loving my father. I’m holding my 8-month-old
when my pops says he’d like to bring his Leica.
Says it as if there’s nothing else to say. The sun-
up-gold Ford is idling, flag flapping. Nevertheless,

I’m recalling my professor, Horace Coleman, a poet
who once christened Black America the engine under
the hood of Thomas Jefferson’s America. I know my
father. However, I’m learning what it takes to get him
to lose the Confederate flag. It’s quiet. Then he laughs.
I see Horace, a veteran of the one war that never ends,
the contest not to be bullied into living untruthfully or
without honor: Horace is nodding, saying I told you so.

Mother waves from the picture window of their house.
Maybe it’s the beauty and hope of having a new son, but
I tell him No way and wait until he grabs the cloth fabric
and rides it up the antenna. Off. A nimbus of bottle flies
is brushed from the fender by his motions. He’s pissed
as he folds the flag. He says for me to put it in the glove
box. I’m holding Matt, but he tries to hand it off to me.
I give him a look and he says to get in the damn car.

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. 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 Ohio Arts Council. Poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Crazyhorse, and Shenandoah among others. Hillbilly Guilt, a recent book, won the 2019 Hidden River Arts / Willow Run Poetry Book Award and is due out in late-spring of 2021.