I bring poets from Lviv, Ukraine to my college class in Arkansas

Julia Kolchinsky

through the computer screen           a loud                     bang           a bomb           a fist perhapsa body      broken                  breaking don’t worry                                      it’s okaythe poet says         her partner shoves                               a cat             into the virtual boxalongside them           the furry predator must                 have knocked downbooks                        or worse                                                          must have followed               its nature          to moveabout the room            as though   all of it                            were his                     we are safethe poet says in English                    in Ukrainian her partner                       clarifiesв Україні безпечного місця немає                             in Ukraine no place is safein Ukraine                       no place is         in Ukraine no place        in Ukraine      noI speak a tongue                                        of violence        in Ukraine                                                                                                                                        the poets movebetween Slavics            mova & rech’         speech & speech             motion & riverhe kisses her         barely bare shoulder               wipes a smudge                     of lipstickfrom the curve of chin          “why                                           is it important            to write      stillduring war?”               my students                                 mouth           towards empathybecause people continue      the poets say           doing what they always do               in hybridlanguage                                             in the same                                        places                                                                                                                                                           I recall weeksafter the first shelling                        Kyiv’s sky              a charcoal canvas      I imagine nothinglike this American                         south’s cerulean March blue             when older kidsapproached            my six-year-old                             on the wire rope sling               spiderclimbing tower                      “What language                                                     are you speaking?”he is honest                We speak                                                                          Russian                  the elementary-school playgroundhushes                          the older kids         now louder                     closer “You’re Russians!?”they climb                                      the steel-steady rungs                        louder             closerMy mom’s from Ukraine                                from below I watch                      white clouds wisphis hair                     maybe smoke                 from my birthplace                                 reaching for useven here “Good thing                                                          she got out” they say       softer            almost“before the Russians                                                                                          killed her”                                                                                                                                                                 my child keepsclimbing   unphased             longing      for summit                         he welcomesviolence    wants a toy tank                  knows                             its caterpillar tracks crush notbutterfly     wants arms    arms                      so many arms          our bodies namedweapon                  not wing      or                     is it the other way around           he climbsarachnid     No           she left                  before              the older boy wants too                 to clarifymake sure my son understands                                                                                          the violencein his bones      his mouth         his tongue                    aloud  bang          “There’s a war there,you know?               Right now!                                    They’re killing                                                                                                                                     everyone!              Bombs!”My son      looks down            from the top                 or maybe sky                   safe             I knowhe says                   My mom was just           in a video                  with some of them        doing poetry& stuff        how else                             to end?                                                                                                                                                                        To go on

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Julia Kolchinsky is the author of four poetry collections: The Many Names for Mother, Don’t Touch the Bones, 40 WEEKS, and PARALLAX (The University of Arkansas Press, 2025) finalist of the Miller Williams Prize. Her next book, When the World Stopped Touching (YesYes Books, 2027), is a collaborative collection with Luisa Muradyan. Her nonfiction has appeared in Cincinnati Review, Brevity, Shenandoah, The Account, and won Michigan Quarterly Review’s Prize in Nonfiction and she is working on a collection of linked lyric essays about parenting her neurodiverse child and the end of her marriage under the shadow of the war in Ukraine, Julia’s birthplace. She is Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Denison University.

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Parallax
The University of Arkansas Press

Arkansas

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Finalist, 2025 Miller Williams Poetry Prize

Julia Kolchinsky’s Parallax offers a lyrical narrative of parenting a neurodiverse child under the shadow of the ongoing war in Ukraine, the poet’s birthplace. As her child expresses a fascination with death and violence, Kolchinsky struggles to process the war unfolding far away, on the same soil where so many of her ancestors perished during the Holocaust.

Anchored by a series of poems that look to the moon, this collection explores displaced perspectives and turns to the celestial to offer meditations on how elements formed in distant stars account for so much of our human DNA. In these poems, writes series editor Patricia Smith, Kolchinsky “clutches at a feeling of home that is both unfamiliar and deeply treasured, longs for all that was left behind, struggles to come to terms with the rampant violence devastating a landscape that still, in so many encouraging and heartbreaking ways, belongs to her.”

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