Lyudmyla Khersonska lives in Odessa, Ukraine. She’s the author of two books, Vse svoi, named one of the ten best poetry books of 2011, and Tyl’naia-litsevaia (2015). She has won the Voloshin competition, among other awards. Evenings devoted to her poetry have been held in Moscow, Kiev, Lviv, Munich, and New York; her work has also been translated into Ukrainian, Lithuanian, and German. In English, her poems appear in Adirondack Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review and Words Without Borders, where she was recently recognized as one of “33 International Women Writers Who Are Bold for Change.” The poems presented here will appear in the three-volume anthology Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine, selected and edited by Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rosochinsky, forthcoming from Academic Studies Press (Brighton, MA).