Editor and Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee Daril Bentley is the author of several honored books of poetry as well as the reference The Bentley Guide to Poets & Poetry in English. He has published poems widely in noted poetry journals in the U.S., Canada, UK, Ireland, and India and has been a Yale Series of Younger Poets Award semifinalist, a New Mexico Book Award for Poetry runner-up, and honorable mention recipient in the Writer’s Digest International Book Award for Self-published Poetry.
He is founder of a poetry editorial service, a poetry reading series, and a poetry outreach program locally. He makes his home in Elmira, along the Chemung River in southern-central New York State.

The Passionate Applicant to His Loov in Time of Recession

Come live with me and be my loov, and we
will all the numerous disadvantages
of joblessness prove.
Come with me cliff-side and move
not an inch. We will spit
at how unmelodious
the qualification tone-deaf world is,
and teetering there between
the horrors of penury and hopelessness

(laughing madly at our lowly CVs), cheat it.
I will make thee not a bed of roses
but a resume to shame the youth they lean
toward due to our advanced ages.
This game consists of
not what is in your brain but
who can get you past the screening stages.
So come live with me and be my loov—
if, that is, you are a fan of sandwiches

And soup for dinner.
I will bide my time, while you consider this,
responding to rejection messages.
Or maybe I will let them guess
how jealous I was or wasn’t of the winner,
or just how desperate.
Suicide is no one else’s biz.
If hungry nights thy mind may move,
then live in destitution with me and be my loov.

Rest-stop John

The Global Drier Corp regrets hands
that without washing up
have pissed upon
their fellow human.

The Sanitary Suds brand
of the Commercial Bathroom Fixtures
Company Ltd. disavows any liability

linked thereto. One should come upon
regular respites at which
one can pull off the road
and unhindered by

least consideration of name or fate
or place pull in, pull up,
pull down and liberated

relieve oneself resolutely in the sight
of men against a hard, slick,
and glaring white
American Standard.

Milk Can Superhero

I am gathering up everywhere I go
all the captive antique milk cans I can find—
the big ones they used to load on trains
to take them everywhere
before everything was homogenized.

I’ll spend, if need be, my retirement savings
to save them from the fate of
umbrella stands and breakfast nook stools
in trendy urban apartments.
Something about it offends the heritage

And world view of a country bumpkin.
There ought to be agrarian extradition laws.
When I run out of money,
if pressed into it, I’ll turn to righteous crime
to rescue Grandfather Waldo’s

Once everyday charges on the dairy farm
from the ignominy of décor.
I’ll disguise myself as a landlord’s handyman
and smuggle them out as shop vacs
with canvas covers when the gullible tenants

Have gone to brunch or Pilates.
Fear not, my trafficked immigrants of Cow—
my refugees of Cheese and Butter.
I am coming for you. There is no haven
for the gangs and cartels and the traffickers.

There is no sanctuary city or state.
I am Captain Cold Restorage!
Soon you will be returned to the dark recesses
of an abandoned barn and the cobweb-
crowded corners where your lives can thrive.