Aidan Forster
Wood/Water Body
One night I slipped from the house.
I could not see my own body
but I felt like more than a body.
I was reflective. I called
every creature to me
and bade them drink my waters.
I scattered with the creatures
and took shelter in a man’s truck.
The man had a beard. The truck
smelled like vanilla and sweat.
He bade me consider the night,
the distance. He placed two wooden
discs over my eyes. From my body
he made a church, a worship to fill it.
He moved through me
like an eidolon. The man lived
inside his parents’ garage. He was
a carpenter. His floor was littered
with wooden figures. He took me
to his bedroom and left
to carve a chair, came back
and revealed to me its sleek figure
which he offered to my body.
And I named the chair Bearded Man.
I sat on Bearded Man and received
its maker. And what have I learned?
How man makes from wood
what he desires and gives his creations
to whom he desires. How to divide
the beasts and the sheets in search
of their cool centers. How to receive
a man like a clump of earth
thrown over me. He has named
my body Wooden Artifice, Water Body.
Aidan Forster is a junior in the creative writing program at the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities. He is the blog editor of The Adroit Journal and the co-founder/editor-in-chief of Fissure, an online magazine for LGBT+ and allied writers and artists. He is the 2016 recipient of the Louise Louis/Emily F. Bourne Student Poetry Award from the Poetry Society of America, and has received national recognition from the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. He work appears in The Adroit Journal, Assaracus, DIALOGIST, Tinderbox, Two Peach, and Verse, among others.