Anne Peters reviews
We retreat into the stillness of our own bones
by Kimberly Kralowec

Kimberly Kralowec’s new chapbook is a delight. Like a Kandinsky painting, Kralowec renders a hazy, dream-like space, unconstrained by the conventional, which permits the reader to drift almost untethered through three sections of untitled poems. At the same time, the clarity and freshness of the imagery, at moments reminiscent of Neruda, grounds the reader: “When your breath / embosses my skin, I lose track of color - / the shade between the minutes, the dye / between the days[.]” Fundamentally, these are love poems, and Kralowec conjures a world outside time and space in which two people find refuge in and exist only for each other. The result is, at times, achingly beautiful: “We are so safe together, we barely / need to wear a thing - / even our own skins. Can we still exist - / this unbound?” Still other lines will haunt the reader long after finishing this tiny tome: “Between dusk and night, / my dress became the color of rain doves - / or the heat of a fire that burns / but never consumes.” In sum, We retreat is a potent debut that will leave readers lingering over its rich imagery and maybe longing to find their own all-encompassing love.

In addition to The Inflectionist Review, Kim Kralowec’s poetry has appeared in journals such as Twyckenham Notes, Nixes Mate Review, The Night Heron Barks, and Birdland. Find her at anapoetics.com.

Anne Peters is a National Book Critics Circle member whose reviews have appeared in BookPage magazine, Bookmarks magazine, Foreword Reviews and City Book Review.