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 

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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.