Motherhood in Difficult Times: Introducing the Poetry of Julia Kolchinsky
And her newest book Parallax (out on March 14th!)
This morning I read the most poignant farewell to Shiri Bibas (z”l) on Facebook. The Israeli/American poet Adina Kopinsky wrote, “With love from someone who wishes she had never heard of you.” The Bibas’ were just a normal young couple, parents of two beautiful babies. I too wish with all my heart that I had never heard of them. Nor of Tsahi Idan (whose body was returned last night from captivity in Gaza where he was killed). I first saw him in a video, his hands covered with his daughter’s blood, as he and his wife put their bodies over the bodies of their children when the rocket sirens blew while they were being held by Hamas gunmen. I wish I had never seen that video, that October 7th had never happened and that we were all going about our lives, the small (or enormous) heroic acts we perform for our children everyday unseen by the rest of the world.
In another truly heroic act, the poet Julia Kolchinsky has written a book (Parallax, (University of Arkansas Press, 2025) about her own motherhood: about her neurodivergent son and the challenges of raising him as she works through her feelings of displacement and anxiety during the war in her homeland of the Ukraine. This is a book of lyric narrative beauty and how lucky are we at Judith that we got the last four unpublished poems in the book just before its release on March 14th!? (Order details below)
As you read these poems think of all of the parents and children going about their daily lives, those who are suffering in war and those suffering in so many other ways. I can’t wait to read Parallax. As a mother how could I not?
You Ask to Count All the Stars Even in a cloudless dark, in our small swath of night, I tell you there are countless we can’t see. And in that smallness, you lose track, quick as dusk. Clinging to Orion’s belt, the little and big bears, you give in to the human way of flame-turned-animal when distance is too great to name. The blue ones, I tell you, are younger, the red, older—dwarfs, planets, satellites. What happens when they die? You ask. How you already know the certainty of endings. They are so far, I say, their light is still making its way. You telescope your eyes—full moons of wonder. They are forever then, your voice all answer & grown, staring, starting—star inside each eye, in every beginning.
Neurodiverse sounds like universe but I can’t write that world so I try a villanelle. The world is cruel to most, just look: the tire-tracked doe’s severed neck, my child’s eyes when you realize his difference. He won’t stop talking, touching, staring, hurting. The world is cruel too. Most just look and marvel, He doesn’t even seem autistic . . . So friendly . . . Speaks another tongue. My child’s eyes when your real lies hit his ears. My hands and heart, the pills and therapy, can’t hold back the world. It’s cruel to most. Just look at any roadkill. Have you stopped long enough to see his open eyes? The world is cruel to most, just look:
Violet Is Another Name for Touch Perhaps he didn’t know his body was already weapon and so became the hurt— the force that leaves its mark pressed deep into another. Perhaps he wanted nothing more than touch. We depend on violent prepositions, perhaps on just the violence. In the lunch line, he held a small boy’s finger, tenderly at first, then pushed it back until, I was waiting for him to cry, he admits, drilling his head into my stomach, the sun a bruise against the bones of oaks. I didn’t want to hurt him. The small boy’s tears and face contorted to a soundless shriek is easy to name ache—an unreachable color outside my son’s body. Violet perhaps or wholly violence. We name the place another’s shape begins to purple. My son’s hair catches in the zipper of my jeans —he doesn’t recognize his body’s endings—its metal teeth full of curl. He doesn’t yell, just pulls harder. I’d rather hurt myself, he says. The only way his body knows to love another. And after, he punches my arm and pinches his sister’s, grabs her cotton candy cheeks. Waiting for us to plum, to pit, to turn crushed blueberry, he sobs, eyes swelling shut—nastic flower heads. Touch a weighted blanket, a mouth, a hurt, sweet perennial—longing deep as beetroot— we cannot keep it trapped inside.
Summer Camp Can’t Fit the Shape of Flame “We cannot accommodate the needs of your child” means find another place for him to be himself & scorch like in the story the cat’s house burns down & no animal will let her in because there is no room for her for him inside & the fire won’t die & “I’m sorry I wish we could do more” means there is nothing they will do & sobs & sobs & can’t stop because I just want to go back to see my friends means he thought for the briefest moment he had friends & the lake held his body tight enough & the sun was only reflection not blister & the ticks didn’t bite his ankles & even if they did it’s okay he says & promises to try harder & be better & keep all that him inside & “I know what you are going through” means they have no idea & it’s not your fault I keep repeating as he sobs & asks to be rocked like a baby with all the heft of a grown boy & limbs flail like young branches until he laughs & forgets tomorrow & summer is long & hot & lingers everywhere his body touches & accommodate means “to make fit” but he doesn’t fit the shape they’ve named child & needs them to change their shape & “we cannot” means did they even try
Julia Kolchinsky (formerly Dasbach) 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. When the World Stopped Touching, a collaborative collection with Luisa Muradyan, is forthcoming from YesYes Books in 2027. She is at work 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.
Delights!
Five Tiny Delights—
1. That first sip of my extra hot morning latte
2. My kids saying they love me to Pluto or the milky way or infinity
3. Their hands, so tight around me, I can't breathe but they are air
4. My soles hitting the pavement when a run is long enough that thinking flees and I can feel only the body
5. The lingering scent of lilacs when perfume seeps into clothes
Five Tiny Jewish Delights—
1. My grandmother's version of "babka" sizzling on the stove---matzo soaked in egg and pan fried so the crust crackles.
2. Fingers slipping into the soft soaked mix of matzo balls and rolling them round against the palms
3. The first sip of black bergamot tea after the 25 hour fast on Yom Kippur
4. My children’s small voices singing over the Chanukkah candles
5. Strumming the guitar while signing in Yiddish and hearing my family sing along, all of us getting so many of the words wrong but so much else right.
Piercing and perfect.
💙💙💙