rinsemiddlebliss
"At the mercy of the geography"
El Camino Del Mar at Dusk
First published in The Coachella Review in the Winter 2018 issue
by AK Krajewska
Happy Autumnal Equinox to all in the Northern Hemisphere! I've got a poem for you today. There is a certain peculiar feeling I get at the autumnal turn. It's a gestalt, a felt sense, some kind of suchness or maybe haecceity of this change, like I can feel the shift of the entire world though the complete combination of all the little shifts all together. Actually, to call it a feeling would imply it's an emotion only and that's entirely too single-dimensional Continue reading (388 words)
Thinking about thinking about the Roman Empire
Eating dormice with garum from the trashcan of memology
by AK Krajewska
When I think about Ancient Rome I think a lot about the stuff that Ancient Romans ate. Like garum the stinky fermented fish sauce they apparently put on everything, or about Roman bread which was round and looked like it had big pizza slices, or about the fact that most Romans probably didn't cook at home and just got cooked food out from vendors. I especially think about edible dormice, which are yes, a kind of tiny rodent... Continue reading (1872 words)
The Gate of Pinecones
First published in The Coachella Review in the Winter 2018 issue
by AK Krajewska
I've found it challenging to place poems with nature imagery that's explicitly West Coast or even more, specifically Californian. In grad school, my advisor called it the four seasons bias. If it's a nature poem, it better follow the four seasons climate or good luck to you getting published. So when I'm browsing Duotrope for likely journals... Continue reading (402 words)
Hair metal fantasy Cymbeline in McLaren Park
A review of San Francisco Shakespeare Festival’s 2023 Free Shakespeare in the Park production of Cymbeline
by AK Krajewska
The poster for Cymbeline in the park looked like a hair metal fantasy movie from the 80s. I’d seen it every time I went to get burritos at my local taqueria, and I thought, whatever this is, it’s gonna be weird. On that promise, it delivered. Continue reading (1773 words)
The inner life manifest as supernatural in The Shining
Are the ghosts real? Yes. No. Maybe.
by AK Krajewska
The Shining takes the inner psychological reality of the dynamics of domestic abuse and makes it visible on the outside as ghosts, visions, and supernatural powers. It doesn’t particularly heighten and certainly doesn’t exaggerate the objective reality of abuse and intimate partner violence. The inner reality of the violence is visible along with its usual outer manifestation. Continue reading (1721 words)