ANDREW CHAPMAN

Love Poem for Horses

When I was a child, I asked to ride on the back of the towering
giant that stood on hooves in my Mammaw’s backyard.

He was god in the valley, who feasted on old bits of corn chips
and browned lettuce from the bottom drawer of the fridge.

Can’t we love him? I would say as I dropped hay down the hatch
of the attic in the barn. I felt like I could fall and crush him.

I would say, Can’t we tame him? as I climbed
through the orchard to find a fruit rotten enough to throw.

The branches left scratches on my new body, but I loved
the smell of apples falling from shaken trees,

as I’m sure Mammaw did when she shook her fruit to the ground.
She was Eve: mother of all the living, even horses,

and I’m sure she shook some apples down even for him,
after eating one herself.

I stopped asking to ride that gargantuan beast when I
saw it barrel toward my Dad with the intent of striking him

off the field. When it jumped the fence, I hid in the attic
of the barn and waited for the animal to be tamed.

The image of a horse-and-bridle is only mist in the mind now;
most giants turn to try and destroy the love you’ve created

with rotten fruit tossed through tree branches,
scratches left all over your new body.

Once Mammaw Eve was banished from the garden,
she must have realized her children too could hurt.

When she was told, “with painful labor you will give birth
to children,” was she in love with her offspring after that?

When she was told, “with painful labor you will give birth
to children,” was she in love with her offspring after that?


ANDREW CHAPMAN is a freshman music therapy major at the University of Louisville. He hails from the area of Flatgap in Eastern Kentucky. He is rooted in a strong sense of family and home, and telling stories about them both.