3 poems by Lola Dekhuijzen

Ars Poetica

On most days, I’m a five-year-old

attempting to draw a hole. Try

explaining to a five-year-old

that a circle won’t capture

the depth of this lack.

Or that we’ll never see

the same cloud twice. I try

to doodle my way out, morphing

my circle into a cloud. Doesn’t

work. New day, same circle.

Eventually, I give in. We sit

around a miniature table. I,

the five-year-old & every

other self that made it.

We get out the glitter glue,

pastel pens, unstuck stickers.

Together we concoct

the prettiest rim

of my life. The inside

stays blank. Sometimes,

when most of us

are sleeping, the absence

winks back, emitting

puffs of purple dust—

the real thing.

Everything

There’s a lightness in not dying

when thinking you might. Picture

this, the sun through a toddler’s eye

a yellow squiggle that captures

all its brilliance. Look, after going

& nearly not returning, even a paperclip

glitters. All its endless ways of bending

and unbending into the loopy things

we construe as selves. Something

about digging right here as pink fruit

appears in whatever’s the opposite

of here, but only if we keep

         digging

it becomes everything.

Cut

I looked inside myself and I really hate

to be bragging, but I saw the prettiest

milkshake I’ve ever seen— purple-

black swirls emitted from a bright ball

of light and I know you are picturing

poking my soul with a straw right now

but can we like take a moment &

admire without consuming? This

is not to say the grudges are gone—

tucked away under my nails,

in the dead ends of my hair,

which is to say, the edges

of me. Sometimes, when gravity

starts to bore me again, I hover

above myself with a pair of scissors

like my own glittery threat.

______________

Lola Dekhuijzen is a poet from Amsterdam. Her work appears in Lighthouse, Abridged, Angel Exhaust and The Passionfruit Review. She will soon begin an MA in Poetry at Queen’s University Belfast.