Three Poems – Lyddia Solomon

Empty

is the wrong word for it.
Emptiness is clean,
neat.
I am a cardboard box
full of things
just a little bit broken.
Things to be thrifted
rather than disposed of
Completely.
Dusty, fussy,
prone to electrical fires.
Some days
I’d rather be the incinerator
or the lightning rod,
glowing white-hot
if only
for a moment.

Samsara

With closed eyes
The rain is bursts of cold
A boy walked into a storm
And screamed
A tree killed someone in the village
A stick of incense burned
So angry
So far from home
Fist to the wall
Mirrors in the blood
Caught in the broom straw
Dust Tulpa
Ravenous thing
Let go
There’s nothing here
There never was

what becomes of us

when the leaves dance
the space between them
shimmers
with a hundred little suns

we were sparks
then cinders
then cancers
then nourishment

shadows in spacetime
carbon monstrosities
and masterpieces

bathed in photons
born at the instant of eternity

a cosmic fire
burning itself out
made up of endless smaller fires
burning themselves out

they are everything
and we are everything
and we are nothing
nothing at all

just I
and I
and I and I

Lyddia Solomon is a poet, short story writer, and playwright based in Los Angeles. She writes about emotional impressions, memory, dreams, altered consciousness, subjective experience, and mortality.