Danielle Mckinney, Mercy (detail), featured in AGNI 103
“If war”
If war
is a film
it’s not necessarily horror.
In my case
it’s a road movie
(what’s your favorite road movie?)
speeding across the deserted steppe
past ranges of slag heaps
and canyons of defense lines
in a race against the tumbleweed sun.
You spend the night in derelict motels
in people’s homes
and all the time
someone is hunting you
and you are hunting them
that’s it
no more fun and games
sometimes
wishes do come true
poof
and your instant noodles in the trench
taste like something cooked up by Hector Jimenez-Bravo
you discover worlds you’ve never known.
Like a town
crisscrossed by meandering tracks
traversed by yellow-beetle trams
a town
25 km from hell
where they make the sweetest halva in the universe
imagine a cross between Interstate 60
and No Country for Old Men.
If war is a song
it’s a song without words
a song without notes
or music
a song
sung
before humankind
before the Earth was created
a song without song
the song of songs.
If war is a season
let me surprise you
and say it’s the last day of summer
a little bit longer
and it’s gone forever
so it seems
but even stationed at the front
you leap out of the trench
like a dolphin
to watch
the squashed-grapefruit sun
bleed across the horizon
and to listen
as the birds resume their song.
I could spend a long time thinking
about what war is like
what it is and who
but I’ll never figure it out
whereas war
knows me
intimately
knows me
like a son
and
for some reason
keeps sparing me.
Maksym Kryvtsov
Maksym Kryvtsov, call sign “Dali” (1990–2024), was a poet, photographer, and machine gunner, who joined the defense of eastern Ukraine in 2014. He served in the National Guard, worked at rehabilitation centers for veterans, mentored children, and enlisted in the Special Operations Forces in 2022. His award-winning poetry collection, Вірші з бійниці (Nash Format, 2023), is forthcoming as Poems Through the Loophole (Jantar Publishing, 2027), translated by Larissa Babij and Helena Kernan, with support from PEN Translates. A collection of his prose in Ukrainian, На мінному полі пам’яті (The Minefield of Memory: Diaries, Essays, Stories, Nash Format), was published posthumously in 2025. Kryvtsov’s poetry has been included in numerous anthologies and set to music by several Ukrainian bands. His military honors include the Presidential Order of Merit, the Commander-in-Chief’s Cross of Merit, the Cross of the Special Operations Forces, and the posthumously awarded the title Hero of Ukraine.
Larissa Babij
Larissa Babij, a Ukrainian-American translator and writer, is the author of A Kind of Refugee: The Story of an American Who Refused to Leave Ukraine (ibidem Press, 2024), based on her wartime writing on Substack. Her translations have appeared in numerous books and periodicals, including Asymptote, Evergreen Review, and Krytyka. She is a member of PEN Ukraine and editor of the London Ukrainian Review. Her co-translation with Helena Kernan of Maksym Kryvtsov’s collection Вірші з бійниці (Poems Through the Loophole) is forthcoming from Jantar Publishing in 2027, with support from PEN Translates. (updated 8/2026)