disarmament
farewell’s occasion composes two flushed and open-mouthed
against one very still
for an elsewhere dream unfolds in the right eye as the left
transmits to the machine
proprioceptive gradients frame more animal bluely inflected
held without being touched
bodies may be stripped mousing statue swerve gentle’s knife
among skirts of scar’s milk
retina floats so light light gravitates ghost at left temple leans
peripheral
four-legged forecast for riverine low country
the orange chair will apparate as round and stained
to those born with valleys crossing their sealed eyelids
Never shown loyalty (Gemini super new moon)
luminous familiar peeling from my twin likeness
loom tenderness and cake weep with Thao what won’t light
love squares hell
Cassie strained moscato through cheesecloth
nobody remembers who broke the bottle
libation of fevers froths mineral muck
finite sky pouring in each pore of May
Poem about cooking then one about a dream
Both hands hold then one floats
Wears a ring caresses a list of ingredients
Earnest belief slender pinkie of pretty nail
Others unruly and sleepwalking
Tempo of kitchens and veranda
Words of departure arise atonal durational
A buttoned-up thing yet to happen
Wrist at her heart tick by tick extending
The hand falls into her exact measure
Ambient waves of turmeric return
And again forget rewinds a left index
Finger a halo recall is her fist with eyes squeezed shut
Dream recounting sways this hand
Flowers get a shoulder roll a circle outlined
Thumb and index finger precise crooked smile
Propeling from diaphragm’s depth
Hear nearby bodies with vibrations in the chest
Nape swirls of follicular ears and right before coming
Her right eye’s tickled sinus tags the wrong ending
And she says she only watches porn for the sound
Song
A spiny flower satellites her bass lines dried down eons over. Green and forgets to limestone instead a forest without leaves. On sleep sunless then summer blanks time with time so I walk into night of ash juniper curtained with drought.
Song
awash with clean offering
dog on a man’s shoulder bicycles in
formal dusk
flash V greeny-blue
to a bar window maybe androgynously
leftover cheese
interlude of sunken nests of mason jars
grainy bubbles pop jack-off songs
o virtuosic bird!
water half-filled
honeybee follow as
fish orange in root and lull
touched with virgo sing
baby got back so
cookie papers luck
hail my getaway as long
as hum loops kin to
coral and drum
Song
bypass poaching inhale slough sigh “oh”
imperative rounding slight lisp
shame resorts to cleverness sound the steep
feral slouching air wetter than memory
post-high possession out tinglies walking sex
in fields and sky of dissident manner all matters expanse
not plain not prairie exhaling strobe light
yanked up t-shirt bares your scenic parking lots
Kimberly Alidio wrote After projects the resound (Black Radish, 2016) and solitude being alien (dancing girl press, 2013). Recent poems have appeared in Nat.Brut and the Texas Review. She is a poetry fellow at Kundiman and VONA/ Voices, and a Zora Neale Hurston Scholar at Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program. She received a doctorate in modern U.S. history from the University of Michigan, held a tenure-track position at the University of Texas’ History Department, and postdoctoral fellowships from the National Academy of Education/ Spencer Foundation and the University of Illinois’ Asian American Studies Program. Most importantly, she is Cancer with Capricorn moon and Cancer rising, metal boar, ENFJ, second-generation (immigrants’ kid), U.S. East Coast-born, and a tenure-track dropout living in East Austin, Texas.
