Poetry
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 (385 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 (399 words)
Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant
by AK Krajewska
I created this poem using cut-up technique, combining bits of my poetry with the poetic excerpt from Expert Judgment on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. By volume, it has much more of my poetry about wolves and coyotes than warnings about nuclear waste, but a little nuclear waste goes a long way, as we all know. Continue reading (681 words)
Fragments from the first year of the plague
Sort-of-poems and sort-of-word-art fragments
by AK Krajewska
During the first year of the pandemic, I could not even finish a poem. I just wrote fragments. However I was able to kind of draw, and so I ended up with a lot of bits of words and ink and pen drawings. Continue reading (610 words)
What the Herb Girl Likes: An Old Poem, with Backstory
by AK Krajewska
1997 was the year of my greatest poetic recognition, and I've never lived up to it since. It's a bit tough when that happens at age 18 to ever feel like you're good enough. To begin with, I was chosen to read at the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival, which is held every summer in Connecticut in a... Continue reading (733 words)
Imperfect Produce Demonstration at Spin City Cafe & Laundromat
by AK Krajewska
OK, one green bell pepper exhibits
Some imperfect radial symmetry:
One apex nubbin is less nubbiny
Than its three self-same fellow lumps.
The zucchini could not, I will grant you
Moonlight as a straight edge at the SAT,
But it's not far off. And the kale? Fine,
firm, bright, and crinkly;...
Continue reading (100 words)
Night-Time Skin Ritual
by AK Krajewska
Natural regenerative process begins 45 minutes prior
and goes on dates with sensation.
The iconic pure opening & reception seats, chocolate & wine,
culminating in a glorious finale with Supreme Eye.
He took and you didn’t. Gigantic lamp can be stories that grow into a tale.
Got a heart?
The...
Continue reading (263 words)
A Pan That is Cake Sized: Recipe for Shrove Tuesday
by AK Krajewska
My child demands a loud noise an oil a Lent a flour cake made of flat, white, and spongy; a very loud noise, eggshells, compost, of course. My child is a picky eater so of course greasy small fingers. Cake demands: my child, my child is flour, eggs, milk, butter, preheat the oven to gasmark 3,... Continue reading (325 words)
They might be wild roses
by AK Krajewska
They might be wild roses
he is going
London is awake,
discover a secret under unnatural lights
dancing queen was the worst.
Write
God inhaled
authenticity do not apply to his work.
Don't imagine food, supplies, and babies.
They... Continue reading (275 words)
Alchemy Practicum and Goat Visit
by AK Krajewska
Goat, you were the only one among
the three goats who pressed his head
against the fence when Rachel and I
came to you after picking crab apples
and black walnuts. I returned
to the paradise of childhood labors:
Piling walnuts onto a flat wicker basket
for Lena’s dyes, their sun-warmed green...
Continue reading (356 words)
Residual Heat at the Decommissioned Synchrotron
by AK Krajewska
We step over fading caution tape, a Geiger counter in your hand
ticking the steady tick of background radiation.
Up and down the textured metal stairs,
my hands slide on cold handrails, you walk ahead.
The urge to touch you radiates through me
wave after wave, something I cannot...
Continue reading (133 words)
Fire Danger: High
by AK Krajewska
"But you burn, and I know it."
Adrienne Rich, “Orion”
As we wind up the Berkley hills, brown foam
peels off the dash of his hot Dodge Dart.
I crank down the windows for a sun-singed draft.
The smoldering tip of his black clove cigarette.
His afternoon stubble, the clear sky, the dry...
Continue reading (135 words)
How the War Started
by AK Krajewska
When Xerxes wrote again: “Deliver up your arms,” Leonidas wrote back: “Come and take them.”
Black eye. The left one. Stubble. Leather jacket and underneath
a black t-shirt with “Fuck You” printed in white. Buckled boots.
His car, named Zeke,
is a '73 Dodge Dart...
Continue reading (216 words)
The Longfellow Bridge
by AK Krajewska
The T runs down the heart
of the bridge.
The cars shake in the dim light
left by the dregs of the day.
May-green trees and May-green weeds
shine, still slick and fresh from rain.
I walk on the edge of the bridge
by a low stone wall.
The rainfall slows.
The Red Line train is gone.
I walk...
Continue reading (129 words)
Airplanes Over the Bog
by AK Krajewska
In response to Brigit Pegeen Kelly’s “The Pear Tree”
Bagno. The name means bog.
The village may have been a bog
before the drainage ditches
gridded it into kolkhoz.
Crop dusters buzz in the cloudy...
Continue reading (495 words)
Like Two Dogs Dancing
by AK Krajewska
[Content warning: animal death]
He turns into the comforter of rain,
no umbrella or hat, just the quilted
sidewalk. The spume from wheels passing
through the deep puddle by the stopped
storm drain arcs into the wet air
like the last blood of his black dog
that as a child he...
Continue reading (134 words)
The Wandering Daughter Returns to Her Neglected Patrimony
by AK Krajewska
From the half-finished bunker of the concrete basement
That was to be the foundation of our now-abandoned
Familial abode that I will neither finish nor furnish
Nor people with young from my rebel womb,
I throw my gaze down the hill of dead orchard,
Across the green lake poisoned with runoff,...
Continue reading (236 words)
Grudzień
by AK Krajewska
The tall, even pines
with sand at their feet
brood black between their trunks.
The winter-dried reeds
frozen solid in the iced-over marsh
rustle in the western wind
that blows from the red,
red disk of the solstice sun
solemnly sliding down the midwinter sky,
...
Continue reading (148 words)
In the Park with Grandmother, Olsztyn, Poland 1981
by AK Krajewska
for Babcia Wańdzia
Though she pulled it back into a bun
black wisps of her hair haloed
her face.
The hard blue sky behind her
run through with a single white thread
of a contrail.
Her skin was like walnut.
With the sun behind her
she smiled at me in...
Continue reading (89 words)
One July at 2 a.m.
by AK Krajewska
Speeding down the kudzu highway
where Atlanta’s orange glow chokes
stars, he forced the '82 stick-
shift Toyota too close to its
effective frequency. I thought
the vibrations would shatter us.
He forgot the front-door key and had to climb
through our bedroom window.
Poison sumac grew...
Continue reading (110 words)
Aubade
by AK Krajewska
In that moment I wonder
was Freud right after all,
is the female nothing, nothing
but the absence of the male?
Am I real or a black void
of soft, organic warmth,
depersonalized fecundity, animal blood,
alien slime, not a person,
only provisional consciousness
that moves towards...
Continue reading (188 words)
Intercourse
by AK Krajewska
I am not a hole,
but in this moment
I become it.
When the act is finished
and the plug is gone
I am no longer whole.
Desire covers the futility
of the thrusting.
If for a moment I regain consciousness
I think “how ridiculous,”
lose all suspension of disbelief
and see sex as...
Continue reading (87 words)
His Eyes
by AK Krajewska
Ten years in these eucalyptus groves
where iodine winds
shuffle menthol gum leaves
I’ve pressed aromatic poultices
against the scar of your memory.
There’s nothing. Nothing behind your blue
eyes, lord of lies, evil magnet,
lodestone of my worst nature,
...
Continue reading (106 words)
Discontent – 280 North
by AK Krajewska
The blue silhouettes of mountain pines
cut like saw teeth against the tangerine sunset.
Metal skeletons of high voltage pylons
unspool threads of electricity.
Power lines crosshatch
white tiger stripes of evening clouds.
“Do you feel the wind,
shaking the car?” he asks.
Could...
Continue reading (120 words)
The Progression of Sunset Over Park Presidio
by AK Krajewska
Down feathers of cirrus clouds
curl in the evening-blue sky
crossed with black power lines.
Behind the cypress and eucalyptus,
the blood-orange sun melts into the Pacific,
spilling its juice into the clouds.
Cold evening rises from the roots
of blue eucalyptus stands
...
Continue reading (122 words)
Foghorn in the Garden
by AK Krajewska
Howl and answer of the summer foghorn
and I kneel by the bed of the disused garden.
Sun on my back quickly passes;
high fog or low clouds flee before the wind.
Howl and answer of the coastal foghorn
and wind shakes the neighbor’s redwood.
Shadows of clouds fly on the concrete
...
Continue reading (85 words)
Flat Tire
by AK Krajewska
Rain in the red forest
Rain on the rocks
Rock chips on the road Rock chip in the tire
Tired tire thumps
Wet scenic pull-off
Wet needles, wet leaves
Car jack and donut
Seek a big rock
Wedge in the front wheel
Jack up the jack
Rotate the wheel
Wheel home crooked
Crooked slow wheels...
Continue reading (86 words)
Dry Season
by AK Krajewska
It should be sodden:
Rain-beaten leaves float in the puddles,
furtive umbrellas cross the Peace Plaza—
Trap the rain’s tap-tap tattoo
under sound studios of taut tenting
that smell of wet wool cuffs—
Cold fingers wrap the plastic grips
and thumb the toggle that erects
...
Continue reading (122 words)
The Photograph We Didn't Take at Baker Beach
by AK Krajewska
Come with me
past the serpentine meadow, through the gate of sea pines
hung with garlands of pinecones and crow song.
Blackberry brambles finish fruiting.
What has not been harvested dries on the branch.
Wild grasses susurrate in the rising wind.
A prairie...
Continue reading (171 words)
Jane Austen's Shadow
by AK Krajewska
Harold Bloom (corpulent-lipped
under-table caresser of the young
and lip-sealed unwilling fearful
thinking of her career that he cannot
aid but can destroy)
says that the Western Canon
is a Hotel with limited Rooms therein
from which one must Evict
its current Occupant to take the slot
on the...
Continue reading (92 words)