KIMBERLY ALIDIO

 

 

 

 

 

Citizen

 

Let’s say this smell in my palm is your scalp’s
        archive
And someone is lying about how we have been to each other
How a life is a living
        built

 

Suddenly you’re old, waiting and trying
I’ve been looking past the crown of your baby hairs for a good while now
Here is time.
I think of a boat: deliverance
        betraying every word for a building

 

        Walking through
        these landscapes muted and
        mishearing
        perpetually pre-words
        I go by smell

 

        You would think I would
        gather some bright
        haloes
        behind baby hairs
        deserving much
        mercy

 

I’m too dumb for the category
        All bodies are pressed grease
        drying down to
        bone            I become
        your crackle pop

 

The disorder of preserving is
absolutely not the fracture

 

        Just run-of-the-mill jus soli treason
                unsponsored
                beyond relative reach
        without grounds
        trained in passive attention

 

Brought close to bear the difference
Safe from the ones who call me to discord
        Held tight

 

I want to be common.

 

“The whole thing is this”
I want you to shut up until you have something in your arms

 

I’ll close my eyes


Kimberly Alidio is a poet, historian, high school teacher, tenure-track drop-out, and author of Solitude Being Alien (Dancing Girl Press). Originally from Baltimore, she lives in Austin. Her poetry has appeared in Bone Bouquet, Fact-Simile, Horse Less Review, Esque, Make/shift, Spiral Orb, and Everyday Genius. She is a Kundiman fellow, alumna of VONA/Voice of Our Nation, a Center for Art and Thought Artist-in-Residence, and a recipient of the Naropa's Zora Neale Hurston Scholarship and the Philippine Artists and Writers Association Manuel G. Flores Prize. She holds a Ph.D from the University of Michigan. Her website is kimberlyalidio.tumblr.com.