Parallax by Julia Kolchinsky
The University of Arkansas Press, 2025
When it got cold enough that my cat started seeking the heating vent as his new best friend, I dug up an old sweater so he could have an umpteenth warm space. As I extracted the sweater from the bottom of a storage box, I felt an unusual, if not unpleasant, texture brush my hand. It turned out to be a desiccated flower head, probably a One-Eyed Susan that somehow found its way into my “comfy” basket, probably via the washer and dryer—an exercise that left it crisp and thorny.
I write probably a One-Eyed Susan because it is a dried-up mimic of what it once was, the front of a perfectly-formed miniature bowl one could keep a tiny trinket in. It is a memory of a memory of what it once was, yet I can’t get myself to discard it, in its worn-out beauty, its resilience. It wants to keep existing.
What a survivor, I thought.
My mind was drenched in the beauty of survival and endurance as I’d started to read Parallax.
With astonishing emotional depth, frankness, and profound intimacy, Julia Kolchinsky takes readers on a deeply personal exploration of migration, motherhood, neurodivergence, and the threads that bind us—both to each other and to our fragmented notions of belonging.
Kolchinsky, a Jewish immigrant from Ukraine, reflects on her childhood departure from her home country, an experience that echoes through the pages like a haunting melody. Her poems are not only rooted in the grief and longing of displacement but also in the hope and uncertainty of building a new home. These reflections intertwine beautifully with the experiences of her children, particularly her neurodivergent son, creating a dialogue across generations.
As a reviewer, I can, for a change, write that these poems are not directly relatable to me and mean it in the best way. I can’t ever quite understand Kolchincky’s pain and love, but I can be in parallel to her. Growing up in the sciences, I am familiar with parallax error. When I place myself so that we’re eye to eye, I see the real measure of these poems, and the precision reads pain, reads human, reads love. The poems remind us of the universal truths that make us human—the search for connection, the pain of loss, and the resilience to keep going.
What you hear in Kolchinsky’s voice, if you’ve had the pleasure to hear her read, is the catch of space. How she is letting you into an inner part of herself that is too tender, too raw. You must follow the voice because the voice will not come out to meet you halfway. Within that space in “Summer Camp Can’t Fit the Shape of Flame,” there is a mother whose hands half shake in both fists and a plea. Look, look, we almost hear her say, look at how this is a life and a person and a mother and a family you are denying.
And reading down, a little gift, we also read “to change / means / try.”
The book is divided into sections named Initial Singularity, Carbon, Hydrogen, Phosphorous, Oxygen, Nitrogen, and Afterglow. By the end of Phosporous, you cannot breathe and welcome Oxygen wholeheartedly. I feel quite certain that Kolchinsky has mastered the use of space to make sure of this.
But Oxygen isn’t just breath; it is a reactive and linking molecule. In “One Year Later,” Kolchinsky refers to the war in Russia and Ukraine, but she may as well have been writing about any of the world’s natural or unnatural disasters—how easily we could feel removed from them— when she asks:
How does a house become a shore
no news can reach? Are we that cruel?
Or is it just that easy to look away from war
when the land and people aren’t yours?
What can you make out of Carbon, Hydrogen, Phosphorous, Oxygen, and Nitrogen? It turns out that you can make almost everything. These six elements share 98% of the mass of living things. When Parallax jumps between war and a migrant’s childhood memories, between the joy and literal physical hurt in the poet’s experience with her son, we get to experience with her a terrain that has been explored and ravaged. The body is the land that has been ravaged. It is unsettling and true, how Kolchinsky feels and experiences the war in parallel, loving because of, loving above all else, trying to find sense in destruction, trying to discipline a limitless curiosity.
Kolchinsky’s language is evocative and cinematic. Her vivid imagery pulls you into intimate spaces. Whether she’s detailing the precarious joy of parenting or navigating the aching distance between “what was” and “what is,” her words carry a palpable urgency.
Take, for example, her reflections on her son’s neurodivergence. Her poetry holds space for his struggles, her fears, and his boundless love. There’s no sugarcoating here, yet neither is there despair. Instead, Kolchinsky’s poems are an exploration of resilience—her own, her son’s, and by extension, ours. Her work challenges readers not to shy away from the harsh or the uncomfortable but to confront it, to feel it, and to find meaning within it.
How love can sound
like what it devours. Bird
like the boy it preys on.
This is poetry that doesn’t just ask to be read; it asks to be felt, remembered, and carried. Parallax captures the essence of resilience in a shifting world, making it a must-read for those who seek to understand both the chaos and beauty of being alive.
–
Miriam Calleja is an award-winning writer, workshop leader, and translator. Her work has appeared in platform review, Odyssey, Taos Journal, plume, Modern Poetry in Translation, humana obscura, and elsewhere. Her latest chapbook is Come Closer, I Don’t Mind the Silence (BottleCap Press, 2023).