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.