Kimberly Alidio
Relative meaning (Smith, Whitten, Bradford, Neguli)
theory of arrangement, dangling zippers
hoodie tongues out, snaps hanging, irregular pattern
“the history of each object is absorbed into whole clusters
of color and relative meaning”
tactile interest and surprise contained by a grid
compression by overstuffing
“Places to Love For”
unpainted whites of canvas in winter
Eye of Providence, molten material, ash (“9.11.01”)
removing the paint and holding it in hand
Mid-Atlantic post-traditional, light in winter
“RSVP Reverie-O”
pantyhose energy residues
who wore them last
Ditches of Santa Cruz
1.
40 species of dragonflies have returned since June.
Thereafter a nonsoon. During WWII, my
dad and his parents fled to their hometown on the banks of
the Santa Cruz.
Bio blitz: lichen and moss are homes for
tardigrades (ie, water bears or moss piglets, phylum
of water-dwelling eight-legged segmented micro
animals).
We might be reclassified as a scrub zone.
A river colloquially known as dead. Breathe out the mouth
to create moisture around creosote, breathe in through the
nose to smell rain.
2.
Sparser snowfall classifies
the Arctic coast as an emergent desert
like the Chihuahuan where
55m or 90% of mature piñon is
Already dead and gone
between 2001 to 2005
long enough to move
the margin to essence
Of a thing biodiversity
soon wildly pristine
& open to oil & gas dvpt
on New Year’s Day
BC barred Unist’ot’en from
checkpointing pipeline
workers on unceded
Wet’suwet’en Territory
Which is some human stain
of fast and slow vanishing
3.
sometimes your rocks surface
along the lungs of a
misnamed house
sometimes your old locks
take a beating on the banks of Lethe
sometimes a silty run
along mile 48.75 of the De Anza
sometimes we’re missing cottonwoods
and instead
we have tamarisks
sometimes female brooms seed
the paved path with snow
sometimes more catkin
than leaf
(it is spring)
sometimes
mucilage sometimes basket
sometimes germinate
from traveling animal
sometimes devils catch ankle
sometimes stone is archeological
old cake tiers ringed by green fence
sometimes you concubine
to nominees
sometimes empires sit
along banks of cheese
sometimes slime chokes groundwater
even if
sometimes effluence
sometimes change comes eroded gain
sometimes you are mistaken for frost
sometimes flow up continent
sometimes you belong
to another
sometimes you are terminal
sometimes the mayfly
sometimes austerity
breeds mosquitos
in swimming pools left half-wild
sometimes the topminnow is the avant-garde
sometimes you smell echo
open meshes and dove-gray edge
of exhaust
sometimes eucharist flocks raucous whitewing
sometimes white-nosed feed on agave nectar
sometimes leaf stigmata open
tiny floodgates
sometimes graythorns rip pages
sometimes brown pods tear from spines
sometimes dried-up dedications are ground
by a community hammermill in the fall
polarities
braid object broad continental
letdown compare vein open
wordless trance
intemperate clement dust
lampoon
looting ritual wash
palace wall
trans censor
desert naked
spirit rect array
mediates
retune s genre
refracts go
culted slate
seeds
wild errands
nervous millennials
chain fruit hookups
pronghorns no leaves
out your bottles
automatic
then quiet 7lbs a day
discounted corpse glorified litter
at your desk materia unstaked
Kimberly Alidio is the author of why letter ellipses (selva oscura), : once teeth bones coral : (Belladonna*), a cell of falls (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs), and after projects the resound (Black Radish). Her prose on poetics, memory, historiography, and postcolonialism has appeared or will appear in Harriet, Poetry Northwest, American Quarterly, Social Text, and the essay collection, Filipino Studies: Palimpsests of Nation and Diaspora. Her website is kimberlyalidio.com.