Alexis Fedorjaczenko

Dear Old Burnt-Out Former Mill Building That I Met On a Walk One Sunny Day Last Month,

You scare me. I am afraid of who is lurking around your corners and I am afraid of falling through your floor. My own building sometimes screams in the wind with a sound that pierces me and I am afraid you have that potential, that you are haunted by whatever abuses have been heaped on you.

Old mill, you occupy this land by the water, the bank I am scaling to find the pulse of the natural world. I climb the old iron rungs of concrete flood barricades and skirt chain-link fences trimmed with barbed wire. I walk the edge of the river when I can and, when I am forced to, I retreat to the road, where I find you. I have been searching for the rhythm of the river but you are here instead, an old shell slowly grinding into dust, a remnant with a raceway underneath. My tongue is heavy, metallic with fear, but I tread rotting planks, peer into pits that exude cool air so damp I can smell its greenness.

With affection,


Alexis Fedorjaczenko writes poetry, essay, and in hybrid methods, and her visual work includes handcrafted Poem Objects, analog and digital collage, poetry, and photography. Her long poem “Ways to Enter an Abandoned Mill” was a  Zoetic Press nominee for Best of the Net 2021; an essay about her visual poetry appears in Axon Journal; and for more info: AlexisF.com or Twitter. Alexis makes home in rural New England.