Alyx Chandler

Never Went to Space Camp

Instead I strap myself snug and barred
into the Moon Shot simulator’s arms, 

get slung open-mouthed above Rocket City.
Only takes 2.5 seconds, quick as judgement 

to see the backroads ballet: a turtle creep
of Toyotas, old airfields, short-leaf pines 

hug-haunting a highway. My home
a little speck I can’t make out but try. 

Height is hypnotic in a town that hunts it—
wide open for the taking. When I sing, 

I’m serenading against the silence
of a broken sound system all the way 

to the devil’s billboard on I-65. He’s lovable,
bright red, long-tailed with a scythe and a sign: 

Go to Church or the Devil Will Get You.
After a storm strikes him down, my brother 

gets me the t-shirt and I wear it every night
on high alert for cloven hooves. Never a sound, 

just the turtle my dad rescues from the road,
brings back shy but alive, poking its head out 

for a home. County Line Road bloats with recent
suburbia then slips back into what I know: a place 

where you roll your windows down and laugh
up at the heavens because Eggbeater Jesus 

is too expensive to be saved but First Baptist
is doing it anyways. Cosmic Christ shining 

from liftoff to landing. What do I really know
anymore about my home state when every day

I get further from it, closer to a bird’s eye view.
Only that all roads lead me back South, feral in it

and nostalgic without it, where my whole world
is still in my mom’s bulky nylon purse, snuck into 

a movie at the planetarium with enough handfuls
of Dollar Store candy to get me straight to the moon.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Alyx Chandler (she/her) is a writer from the South who received her MFA in poetry at the University of Montana, where she taught composition and poetry. She is a publicist for Poetry Northwest, a reader for Electric Literature and former poetry editor for CutBank. Her poetry can be found or is forthcoming in Cordella Magazine, Greensboro Review, SWWIM, Anatolios Magazine, Sweet Tree Review and elsewhere. Learn more at alyxchandler.com.