Kit Holden-Ada
New ground to fall upon
sweating.
Stinking of exhaustion
we follow the migration,
chasing the work.
A movement choreographed by barren blocks
and paychecks,
pitchbound.
Magnetized to this unfolding,
uncertain as it is,
we dance with proximity;
a mutual commitment to intimacy and expanse.
Not wanting to lose touch,
not yet.
Whistling is the wind’s work,
so we listen to learn.
We rest,
70 miles south
of Christian Valley
where fallen fruit lines the ditches,
the stars our beating blankets.
The bugs’ burning gestures
keep me from my dreams,
teaching me of patience
and shelter;
a version of home folding in on itself.
The air is parched here
and the sun screams fire the higher we ride.
I hold quiet on the lift up,
chalkmouthed.
My skin is taught
straining for the next rain,
I can taste it.
I am a point on which scales rest,
a tiny but elemental neither/nor.
I fall into the land
fashioned with scars that could eat me alive,
and it all lifts.
Everything is lyrical.
I whisper into the wind
a deep ask,
teeth painted with dust.
I couldn’t have known
the mud would slide,
widening our wait.
“Patience,” the storm answered.
Winding is the water’s work,
so I watch to learn,
awash in the care and peril of fluidity.
Kit Holden-Ada
Kit Holden-Ada is a prairie-born multidisciplinary settler artist and craftsperson based in Kjiputktuk, Mi’kma’ki (Halifax, NS). They studied as an interdisciplinary artist (ceramics, sound, metalsmithing) at NSCAD University and have been producing a line of jewelry work, Fervour’s Own Jewellery, since 2011. They appreciate working in close relationship with the body and the elements and consider hand making an embodiment practice. Kit maintains slow engagement with movement, sound art, and installation-based work centering curious and reverent explorations of (queer) relationality, practice, and play. A mischievous piscean nightowl, they write poetry behind the scenes and keep starting to learn the drums.