Listen to Aleks Zywicki read “rewatching the film” from Shō No. 7 (Summer 2025).
About this poem: “rewatching the film” is an ekphrasis poem inspired by the 2013 film, Under the Skin.
I don’t really like violent movies and I’m not even sure that I can say I enjoyed seeing this one. But right in the middle of it, there’s this incredible—though deeply unsettling—scene that I just couldn’t shake. I think it has something to do with the strange dream logic of it: one-by-one people (a whole family) following each other into the ocean, to drown—just this clear-headed, uncanny, & sudden vanishing.
There are so many movies that I love more and much prefer to think about, but this scene and the way it startles, moved through me the way a poem does and I felt a really strong compulsion to make something of that.
Aleksander Zywicki was raised in Bayonne, New Jersey. He holds an MFA from The New School and his work appears (or is forthcoming) in: Plume, Gulf Coast, Hunger Mountain, Seneca Review, Laurel Review and elsewhere. Aleks has received a poetry fellowship from the Martha’s Vineyard Institute for Creative Writing and a teaching fellowship from the Folger Shakespeare Library. He teaches English and creative writing at The Hudson School.