Krempp & Feda – February 2026

Shell Feda and Celine Krempp traded art and words. Celine shared this untitled image with Shell:

In response, Shell wrote this poem:

Agamemnon Calls His Daughter To Aulis

but she does not come. 
She is with her mother, exploring the mall in their new town.
Today her mother handed her five twenties 
and three hours of freedom before lunch.
Five twenties! Three hours! Usually it is two and two.
She can be anyone. The whole world is hers.

Alone, Agamemnon’s daughter checks over her shoulder
and slips out of the skylit promenade. She sneaks past the
     guards
into Abercrombie’s pulsing darkness. She has never been in
     here before.
Her mother never allowed it. Sandalwood and peony hang in
     the air,
thick as smoke. Her chest vibrates under a Rihanna club
     remix.
Bodies slip around her in the dark. Hangers chatter on their
     racks.

Fingering a little dress, a cap-sleeved babydoll thing,
hem of ruffles and crochet eyelets, she thinks of the spume
the ocean left behind on the beach by her old house.
There are no oceans here. 

Her mother’s twenties hum in her pocket. 

A boy and a girl loom windswept and monochrome above her.
They are at the beach. She wants, cannot be seen wanting, rifles the dresses.
Will she ever be held like that? Wear a bikini, be pretty, be noticed
by a boy? A shirtless boy?

Maybe this dress…

…with a lip gloss from Claire’s…. 

…espadrilles from Macy’s, a new Coach purse…

Iphigenia blinks her way out of the store.
Her shopping bag declares her transformation.

From the Zales across the way her mother emerges. 
The skylights catch on her diamond tennis bracelet.
The gold band she wore in is nowhere to be seen.

* * * * *

Shell shared this poem with Celine:

Portrait of Vases, Still Life of Girls

What can I say about the vases
that I cannot say about the girls?

 Even as they wait they are lively
in their ornament,

 yet still, stately, and sturdy.
and shapely. And softly frilled

 at their openings, ready to receive
and be filled, bloom, burst

 with life and color, their bodies 
so sensuous and spirited

 birds billow out of wild rushes
toward branches blossoming and bursting

 with berries, so lush there is no wanting,
there can never be wanting,

even as the vessels that bear them
hold back the dark.

In response, Celine created this piece, titled “Belladonna Daughters”: