*
a wave of uneasiness twists
the room’s cube unwinds in a chain of noise
walls’ origami contracts into hummocks like hedgehogs
contradictions of altitude
the outcrop presses man
into the clouds of trees
Translated by Ryan Hardy, Kevin M. F. Platt, Timmy Straw
protocol peonies
*
dew’s perspective
the lens observes a retinal path
from the birch leaf’s center
to the edge and back
the image is absorbed
exfoliating the impression
with a blink
<protocol peonies>
Translated by Asher Maria and Kevin M. F. Platt
Ryan Hardy is a translator, educator, and Master’s candidate at University College London’s School of Slavonic and East European Studies. He has held various writing and editing positions for the School of Russian and Asian Studies, Pomona College Vestnik, and DoubleSpeak Magazine.
Asher Maria is a Ph.D. student in Comparative Literature & Literary Theory at the University of Pennsylvania. Their work in translation focuses on Lithuanian, Russian, and Portuguese writing. They were a 2024-25 Emerging Translation Mentorship winner with the UK’s National Centre for Writing.
Kevin M. F. Platt is a professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of. His translations of Russophone and Latvian poetry have appeared in Asymptote, World Literature Today, Jacket2, and other journals, as well as in a number of books. He is founder and organizer of the Your Language My Ear translation symposium.
Timmy Straw is a poet, musician, and translator from Oregon. A graduate from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, their first poetry collection The Thomas Salto was published by Fonograf Editions in 2023, and their work has appeared in Harper’s, The Paris Review, Annulet, and Yale Review.
