by Andrew Chapman
Exodus
There are no tourists
in the spill-off
Cattails look dipped in ink
My friends walk the holler
that parts the auburn hills
My dog’s tail muddies
in the gracious river branch
Black bumper sticker
on the electric car
says “friend of coal”
As a child I wash my hands
in the creek with traces of shit
faded yellow teeth
of the bulldozers
Leveling the slopes
dandelions grow
behind the wheels
What’s a “friend”?
Like Jesus is the idea
and the man
but the sticker isn’t anything
you can touch
Only the god of rock
chipped away
to his imagined parts
I chalk out an airplane
on the concrete carport
the trucks spill coal like water
The drivers flow downstream
The parkway, Moses
parting red mountains
Andrew Chapman is a Louisville, Kentucky-based poet, music therapist, and songwriter raised in Flatgap, Kentucky. He is an MA in English student at the University of Louisville where he has received the department’s Graduate Award for Poetry. His writing, previously included in Miracle Monocle and other publications, centers on the people he loves and the places he comes from. He also writes and performs with the band The Brothers’ Mother.