“9:25 AM and the sky is a Grape Long Drink
on ice and all the pollinators are dead

hand in hand with me. I’m allergic
to everything that happens. What will I

put on now, what pulses in the temples,
the wrists? I clench myself beside my fist

but nothing is as hard as
the world, not really.”

***

Tytti Heikkinen is a Finnish poet. She is the author of three poetry collections in Finland and a collection in the USA, The Warmth of the Taxidermied Animal (Action Books 2010, translated by Niina Pollari). Her work has been featured in literary magazines in France, Italy, Canada, the USA, and Finland, where she has received literary prizes for her short stories, among others. In 2023, she was awarded the second prize in the 9th international Singapore Poetry Contest, judged by poet Jim Pascual Agustin.

Niina Pollari is a poet and Finnish translator. She is the author of the poetry collections Path of Totality (Soft Skull 2022) and Dead Horse (Birds, LLC 2015), as well as the co-author of the split chapbook Total Mood Killer (Tiger Bee Press 2017).