This Body Has Never Been
I am forever chalk-outline.
My father taught us
the art of squashing:
tomato-killers;
ourselves against his palms;
beneath a barrage of wheels
five years wide in his stead.
This body has never been
mine, nothing but split, reject.
Springing from my sister,
denying you my belly-button.
My sputtering infancy.
I am cedar. I never settle.
You plant hydrangeas in empty
dresses, name them daughter.
Firecracker rose bursting from my
mouth stem hooking my neck I am
a fixed point, hung.
The warning, the lesson.
I am forever chalk-outline.
My father taught us
the art of squashing:
tomato-killers;
ourselves against his palms;
beneath a barrage of wheels
five years wide in his stead.
This body has never been
mine, nothing but split, reject.
Springing from my sister,
denying you my belly-button.
My sputtering infancy.
I am cedar. I never settle.
You plant hydrangeas in empty
dresses, name them daughter.
Firecracker rose bursting from my
mouth stem hooking my neck I am
a fixed point, hung.
The warning, the lesson.
Auden Eagerton is a non-binary poet located in Kennesaw, Georgia. They received a Bachelor of Arts in English at Kennesaw State University, and will pursue their MFA in Creative Writing at Georgia College and State University beginning in August 2020. Their work has been featured in Exhume Literary Journal, Cathexis Northwest Press, LandLocked Magazine, Across the Margin, DASH Literary Journal, The Bookends Review, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Digging Through the Fat/Digging Press, Feral: A Journal of Art and Poetry, and is upcoming in peculiar, The Meadow, Kudzu, and Swimming with Elephants Press.