Kyiv Summer

July 2022

The guy with donations for Irpin is late.
We wait in the shade by the roasting car
and observe the sun-cracked playground.

A dusty slide and swings, a rocket-shaped
climbing frame glints and flakes. The scrap
of no-entry tape left behind from Covid.

No kids. Occasional women hail friends
for a slow recalibration. The why
did you stay here in March? conversation.

The roundabout creaks in humid air.
Nina heard Belarus will invade; things
in Sievierodonetsk are very difficult.

In Kyiv you have to look for the wreckage.
It’s not like Irpin, where world leaders strut
alongside Zelensky, nod earnestly at craters.

In Mariupol, the surviving kids
scamper up climbing frames.
Blast waves passed through the bars.

No one everywhere speaks of their fathers.
Their absence shines in the empty sun.

Anna Bowles is a freelance editor and pro-Ukrainian activist who divides her time between London and Ukraine. She began writing poetry in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion in February, 2022 and her work has been published in Magma, Orbis, The Four-Faced Liar, Poetry Salzburg, and others, as well as placing in a number of UK competitions.