APIARY 2 TEASER by APIARY Magazine

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APIARY publishes work by writers of all ages. However, some content may not be appropriate for younger children. We also distribute a kid-friendly PDF edition of the magazine, free for schools and teachers. If you would like a copy of this edition, email info@apiarymagazine.com

issue 2

spring/summer 2011

CONTENTS FEATURE: 59

The Letters of Lamont B. Steptoe and Dennis Brutus

*** 5 7* 11 13 14 20 22* 26 29 37 42 43 44 49* 53 55 71 78 80 88

This Just In She Homebound At the End of My Vision Biological Mother The House That Moved Eve Butterfly Effect Abbreviated Epic for Girl Scouts A Water Tale Polyphonic Monody Fireworks for a Soldier Spontaneous Human Combustion Star’s Paper Lantern On Returning Home: Laryngology The Robbery Queens Summit Foreign Focus Hitching to Nirvana (excerpts) New Growth

Jim Cory Michelle Myers Theo Brown Alla Vilyanskaya J.A. Curcione Nina Melito On Point Ink Toby Altman Karen Rile Enrique Sacerio-Gari Blaise Laramee Joseph Dorazio Isabel Ramos Justin Ching Tessa Micaela Nick Lepre Nina “Lyrispect” Ball Jaclyn Sadicario Janet Mason Warren Longmire

90 91 93 100 102 108 111 114 122 128 130 131 134 136 139 141 144

The Sad One Being and Doing Shade In This House Hypnagogia Round Midnight Poem Canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Action Number Four The Poem Tree Gaviota Strong Somnambulist Ainu Move Summer â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;10 Defend the Honor A Nest Above The Fork and Knife Together

Son Huynh Peter Baroth Zachary Hayes Mariah Gayle Angelo Colavita Marie-Antoinette Clark Drew Kalbach Jacob Russell Andrew Kohlbenschlag Sam Burke Rachel Brown Steve Burke Aleyah K. Macon Lauren Strenger Aziza Kinteh Catherine Staples Nick Forrest

Italics denote Apiary Youth - Philadelphia writers between the ages of 8 and 18 *Performed live on APIARY Mixtape

Editors Michelle E. Crouch Lillian Dunn Nick Forrest Tamara Oakman Tiana Pyer-Pereira and Monica Zaleska, our very first intern

APIARY has grown up fast. In the months since Issue 1, our project has expanded in ways we never imagined. We’ve gone live with readings and panels at Swarthmore College, Giovanni’s Room, Big Blue Marble Books, the Tritone, and Arcadia University. We’ve teamed up with awesome local groups like Art Sanctuary, Feet Active - a monthly yoga-dance-vegan cupcake party - and Geekadelphia.com. PhillyCAM trained us to film our events and document Philadelphia’s amazing spoken word scene (watch out for our upcoming public access show, which may or may not feature cats reading poetry). We socialmedia’d our hearts out, raised $4,000 through Kickstarter, revamped the website, and learned how to use Twitter. Sort of. Oh yeah, and we still make a magazine, too. With the submissions pouring in, we’ve been able to snag work by Philadelphia’s best poets and writers - ones you’ve heard of, ones you haven’t, ones who are still in middle school. This print issue is just one piece of the puzzle. apiarymagazine.com will be publishing even more great writing, interviews, and video features throughout the year, and we’ll be back in paper with Issue 3 in November. It’s hard to say what APIARY will look like in another year. If we’ve learned anything, it’s that keeping up with Philadelphia’s many literary scenes requires nearconstant evolution. All that we can promise is that, like Philadelphia, it’ll be diverse, energetic, and a lot of fun. -the editors

THIS JUST IN Witnesses report lost luggage thrives in the wild Coyotes attack kids on pet crematorium complaint Judge allegedly napped, tried to stage coup Report: fired admiral rips through parts of Mississippi Work at Home: Break out of the Manson Ranch Pope: Sex can become ‘a final resting reef ’ Wife’s beer fortune became ‘like a drug’ Skimpy prom dress lands teen in Zimbabwe L.A.’s cupcake boom won’t prevent Alzheimer’s Mom who caged teen son rips down buildings China’s giant pandas survive brain cancer Governor seeks fees to help fight harmful nipple cream Violence breaks out over jumping ducklings Pirates charged with luggage rage Sunbathing girls maimed by plate-sized face tumor DNA samples saving children from trash heap Uncontacted tribe: ‘Never give in’ 30 tons of lobster lost in child bribe probe Poll: Half say ‘struck by lightning’ Cory, “This just in…”, cont.

2. Shuttle crew wear thong disguises Tropical storm chained to table by parents Hitler waxwork photographed crashing into bike races Job number 1 after docking: view brain cancer stories Minivan accused of killing husband Fifth severed foot found on Broadway

Jim Cory

SHE HOME-BOUND For Brenda McMillan and Myong Myers

The ache to die in the place that She had lived began in her feet, this yearning for crossing a threshold that She could call her own. And her feet bore the ache down deep as She walked through life searching for a place to die. But this place could not be the land in which She was born for restless feet had carried her from post-war Korea, fatherless and therefore nameless, a might-as-well-have-never-been-born existence, on child-sized feet that bore witness to moving spaces to which She had no connection. And when the sky finally fell under the heavy hand of a cruel uncle and loveless stepfather, her bare feet swept She and her younger sister along suspiciously shifting mountain roads seemingly filled with growling horangiâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;tigersâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;to stand on a train platform to Seoul 7

singing songs for candy and sleeping on benches, trusting the kindness of passing strangers to get them on the right rain to somewhere-other-than-here. But her sister’s feet did not bear the same kind of aching and so retraced footprints in retreat with an exhaling breath reserved for a resigned return to the only place the sister had ever known. And since She could not call this home, She let her sister go and kept moving forward, ever yearning— “I want to die in the place that I have lived”— But knowing She had not yet lived, her naked feet bore her across a fluid earth, seeking refuge in solid ground that her feet could root into. And it was this primal connection to the land that made her feet thirsty and, therefore, impatient. So they clung to the first bit of rocky ground to stretch underfoot and being tired and lacking the restless defiant spirit She once had, 8

She relented to her aching feet and set down roots in this cold soil, almost barren of water and light. Yet She willed herself to stretch upward and outward and a home grew from her fingertips, and beneath the encircling canopy of her arms, a dandelion daughter and a dandelion son managed to spring from the precarious soil and while the seasons came and left, the winds ever relentlessly pushed and moved the dry unreliable dirt around her, exposing her aging brittle malnourished and long-forgotten feet. When the dandelion daughter and son bore witness to this, they cried salty tears that only made her feet more root bound. And as the winds howled heartlessly around them, the dandelion son and daughter tried to dig her out but soon 9

understood her feet had become too firmly planted and She would only leave this place if She were ripped out or cut away. So in the time they had left, they messaged her aching feet as best they could until the winds became too powerful and the dandelion son blew away on wispy seeds that wandered aimlessly on precocious air currents. The dandelion daughter watched her brother until he was out of sight then turned and pleaded with She in desperation: “Please just pull up your feet and walk away!” But even as She heard her dandelion daughter’s words and felt the land beneath her crumbling away from her aching feet, She only knew what She had always known— “I want to die in the place that I have lived”— and with that whisper She blew her dandelion daughter away with the hopeful wish that wispy seeds would find firm footing on solid ground somewhere-other-than-here. Michelle Myers 10

AT THE END OF MY VISION At the end of my vision, I witnessed you crucify yourself onto the curvature of America’s bowed branch, doomed to a certain invisibility because nobody saw you do it. At the end of my vision, I witnessed the great Artist lose himself in the spiral of a Northern Light, or drown himself under the pale glow of the moon and eye the sky with some muted wonder. At the end of my vision, I witnessed the old, cracked bodies of aging planets, mapped with ghostly craters, spin in revolutions as they’d expand and contract until disappearing in a silent explosion. At the end of my vision, I witnessed the incessant drooling of life’s great, frothy canine mouth whose teeth had blackened at the gums, whose tongue was sticky with some sick foam. At the end of my vision, I witnessed the carp swim against the marching of the currents, drowning in a river of fish hooks and bait made to resemble the

artistic fingers of writers, painters, and warlords. At the end of my vision, I witnessed the smoke rise from the muzzle of a rifle and settle into a haze over the steel and concrete, and executioner of Mother Nature. At the end of my vision, I witnessed a maple tree crash down near home and breathe to me that she was out of seed, where in the morning, mother would come out to plow the earth and cry that we would all be condemned to perdition. At the end of my vision, I witnessed a slow-burning, eternal fire, and tasted ash in this world where art and beauty held no place.

Theo Brown

BIOLOGICAL MOTHER Mother Russia Grandfather Lenin Tovarish Stalin What was your dream? Was it pure, like the black sea And when did it contaminate? Drinking your own blood out of a gold goblet New Russians, Old Poverty Old ladies, designer shawls Selling sunflower seeds Ripe fruit bitter With taste of pogroms Unfit mother, speak your tongue My soul, a fossil In your earth. Alla Vilyanskaya

THE HOUSE THAT MOVED

Some of the open spaces on the long rows of houses were

there waiting for something new, some were the scars of things collapsed and gone. The house that moved found its way in and out of those holes in the blocks that wound up the hill. Its windows looked sometimes to the sun breaking under the passing clouds or to the city skyline or at the frustrated suits shoveling off their cars. It didn’t linger long in any one spot before moving somewhere else leaving its odd prints in the snow and dirt. Behind it dropped a trail of all the familiar things once found inside, littering the streets with furniture, photographs, boxes of Christmas decorations. Until all that was left were the two of them sitting at a kitchen table with nothing to look at but nothing. He counted tiles on the floor. She watched the edge of her fingernails run across the lip of the table. The light from outside sprayed in at odd angles as the house moved, sometimes up the hill deeper into the tight regiments of houses, sometimes down to the green dingy river. He stood and walked to the sink, letting the water that dripped from the faucet run over his fingers before slamming his hand down on it. He found a voice strangely quieter than his fist. “This thing never worked.” “The noise used to keep me up when we first moved here. I guess I got used to it.” She moves her head in his direction, pointing her voice towards him but not her eyes. The house rumbled beneath them and began to move again. They

were oblivious, hating and thankful for the silence that broke apart their conversation. “I could stay until later.” She shook her head viciously, gave him a quick stare and a smile painfully polite. “That doesn’t make any sense.” A snow squall blew behind him in the window. They had moved again. The old slate roof of the abandoned school building on their block could be seen in the distance. The closer rooflines she didn’t recognize. “Does it?” “No. Not really. I left the address, in case-” “I saw. Good. In case.” “I’ll come by tomorrow. There are some things I couldn’t fit. Say one?” “One’s fine. I’ll be at work.” On the wall in the far corner of the kitchen, just next to the refrigerator was a large crack where the plaster had peeled. Water continually seeped in. She noticed it when they first saw the place, a long finger of discolored paint, stained from the outside weather, creeping down the wall. First he tried to seal it but the water came through anyway, turning the putty a filthy yellow and cracking it further. Then she tried three successive colors, each one darker than the last, to conceal it. Three attempts failed. So she painted the wall a bright red. He came home and saw her, wearing splatter like warpaint, slashing at the wall with a roller, going over it again and again, putting seven coats of paint on the wall. Then she watched it all night long. She sat on the kitchen table with her knees crossed staring, daring the crack to come back. The next morning he came to the kitchen for breakfast, saw her crying and saw the crack in the wall. He couldn’t help but

laugh. She stared at him angrily while his back was turned and in one final fit of rage she swiped the still bleeding roller down the back of his T-shirt while he was getting a drink of water. He turned to her, shocked, as her face went from fury to disbelief before melting into apologetic laughter. So he took his shirt off and he used a thumbtack from the drawer no one ever cleaned to hang it over the crack, the smeared red paint facing them both. It was her newest piece of art, he said and was glad it was hanging in their home and not another of those poorly lit galleries she always found. She thought how she loved his sense of humor as she spent the next three weeks looking for a replacement shirt. Each time the house moved to a new spot, the crack widened. The shirt that hung all that time fell unnoticed to the ground. From where she sat she saw the shadows of the houses around them stretch and yawn across his back coloring away all the little things about him she knew. For hours that morning they had walked around a hanging silence with a strange ugly sounding conversation until finally the house began to shift underneath them. They were unsure, by the afternoon, who wanted it to go first but that was academic now. They did notice the shaking walls initially but that soon disappeared into the background. They could hear the last of their things make soft impressions made in the dirt and snow, the house throwing things away while they looked at how they weren’t really looking at each other. They knew their things were going, those little useless items that had parts of her story and parts of his together, knew they should miss them, should try to stop the house from throwing them aside but the things themselves started to look a little too unfamiliar, some too sharp to grab at. Even her hair, which had started that morning thin and light had

turned long and brown while they spoke or didn’t speak. Each tense and laden syllable they dropped gave the house one more thing to throw away. She stood to put her cup of coffee in the sink, felt him looking at her hair. He hadn’t moved from his spot at the counter and they were close. She heard him thinking. “I feel like I’ve seen you here before. In this exact spot. What do they call that?” He said nothing though, of course, he knew. It might be the last thing he said to her and he didn’t want it to be that. He wanted something memorable. Everything had the feel of heat and transition as he walked past her long hair, which still smelled the same, to the doorway opposite. There was a little blue bag he nudged from his path. “Okay.” Then there was a lurch. The house came to a standstill launching everything left inside from its place- a small plant in a ceramic pot he bought her once when she was sick tumbled, a picture fell off the wall and the shattered glass left a slice in the print she knew he wanted. The cup she had perched near the sink tumbled backward. They watched it drop for each ticking minute until it shattered an hour later on the tiles, splitting into jagged teeth that caught the remaining sunlight and glowed white, veined with coffee stains. Neither one of them moved, though, still watching it. It was now almost evening. He pointed to the floor. “Don’t cut your feet.” “I won’t.” “I’ll get the broom.” “No. That’s okay.” She moved closer to him, raising her long hair like a curtain against the kitchen. She thought about touching his coat, she

hadn’t seen him take it from the closet. He put his hand against the wall, his fingers bumping along clumps of paint badly applied by a previous tenant. “Okay.” She looked at him then. There was so much in his face that she knew. “Okay.” He picked up his bag and moved quickly to the front door. She didn’t look at it once it had shut. Outside, the house had settled in a vacant spot on a quiet unfamiliar street. The faces of the houses that surrounded it were all different, the cars that lined the street were unknown. There was a sharp metal whine as a train stopped nearby. He wasn’t sure where he was, if it was even the same city or where his tightly packed car was. He didn’t look around him long before he began to walk, it was late. Everything sounded real, felt real. The air made him cold. Car exhaust, coarse and nauseating, hung around him. He had no direction to go because he had so sense of origin. He walked out of a house he didn’t know onto a sidewalk he didn’t know looking at things he didn’t know. The house that moved was even a different color. Not that he noticed that until he was a block away and turned to look at it only, as he rationalized, to get some better idea of where he was. He made a random left turn and lost sight of the house, walking into a gripping feeling like the cold. He paid no attention to the prints the house had made on its journey or the things that used to belong to him that he passed, now discarded on the snow and street. He felt like he had forgotten something. J.A. Curcione

AN ABBREVIATED EPIC FOR THE GIRL SCOUTS 1. At Normandy, they landed in skis and snow-shoes, ready to stamp out whiskey and pornography. No one told them it was summer. They did not make it off the beach. 2. When we woke in the morning, only the bees had survived— only the bees, and your grandmother’s fruit trees, fringed with ice and old wool. Give us women such as her! sloshed, peddling thin mints and peanut-butter oolongs in the parking lot after church.

3. Greatness is the death of birds: when we woke, James Polk was at the door, with a bag full of water snakes and snapping turtles. He’d put on weight, dyed his hair blond, dressed himself in feathers: That night, our closets were filled with parrots, white and silent, each, a fallen scout. 4. That we do not forget when they held the cathedral at Mon Pierre, with only cigarette butts and salmon snouts— six hours against Germans, enough time for the sonderkommando to build a monument to his wife, a scout herself, who turned into a bee-hive when her husband joined the Nazis— that we may not forget those scouts!

Six hours against the Nazis and when they looked again, the cathedral was full of snakes, startled and angry, scraping honey from the saints.

Toby Altman

POLYPHONIC MONODY 1. Brother under the rubble sand shepherd without a name who searched for greenness and became a nation between two rivers, I bring you before the sun and the moon so they can see your face and your hair, for the earth to quake against a battle so unjust and the stars to neigh against the fire from afar that fell upon your bed. You were a father

in your dwelling in your land heart of a herd from the desert branches by the bank of the watersâ&#x20AC;Ś and they transformed your wheat into thistle within your eyes befell bare hills and dead waters. You died in life, you shall live in the rain that searches for its ponds. 2. Sister widow in the afternoon without a morning you prepare lamb wrapped with eggplant (tongue of the judge) that resounds and denounces the crimes

against your people. If you only had a neighbor of peace! If you only had shelter on the road away from the war! They shoot arrows, murderous tongues flocks of falsehood and uniforms disguised as the desert poisoning your streams. The lament of your eyes shall return to town to awaken a united cry and destroy the hideouts of the jackals. 3. Boys and girls, white shrouds on living shoulders, life returns to the windows

and the newly swept streets hear a funeral elegy Will the nations understand this? Who will press the trigger of a camera to show us the blood in the rivers that border the cradles spattered by civilization? The cattle bellows, the storks flee their nests, and mothers lift their smiling children, shrouded in white in the scopes of the soldiers of the candidates

Enrique Sacerio-GarĂ

ON RETURNING HOME: LARYNGOLOGY when I arrived everything was different that had flitted around the light were still and overturned empty except for a can of condensed milk

the moths the cupboards were

I was asked to speak a woven square crossed my throat my mouth opened and nothing came, clavicle sewed shut even my voice was afraid if only the floor had come up to meet me when I arrived I sat on my shins lilies like twisted fingers trellised along what I couldn’t; a bed of cardboard the heavy boots choking, choking my chest did not resume its usual rise and fall I sat down on the floor because my life was moving too quickly, the houseplants stuttered a magazine was opened to an article I had already read: there are only two bones in the throats of

mammals and I think mine are broken empty the moths table

the cupboards were were still on the

because my life was moving too quickly, the tea I drank, which tasted of metal, spilled since I had been gone shame made everything

taste of metal I can’t say who was responsible just a tiny pool of mud next to my boots, just that it was possible, for a moment, to believe in growing smaller

Tessa Micaela

FEATURE:

the letters of LAMONT B. STEPTOE and DENNIS BRUTUS 59

Dennis Vincent Brutus, 1924-2009.

Dennis Brutus, poet and lifelong activist, first came to the United States in

1977. By that point, he had already served as a vital force in South Africaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s anti-apartheid movement, focused on expelling South Africa from the Olympic Games. After suffering a gunshot wound to the back during his arrest, Brutus wrote his first two volumes of poetry while imprisoned on Robben Island â&#x20AC;&#x201C; in the cell next to Nelson Mandela. His aims shifted towards the divestment movement, persuading corporations, colleges, and universities to divest from South Africa. After his release and exile, he continued his literary and political work from London, and then moved the United States to teach, first at Northwestern University. He then taught briefly at Swarthmore College, but left due to opposition to the divestment movement, and moved to a position at the University of Pittsburgh. He released 11 books of poetry and brought together a community of African writers. Towards the end of his life, Brutus felt betrayed by the African National Congressâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s political stance. This led him to broaden the scope of his activism to a worldwide push for economic justice and a resistance of globalization by corporate entities.

During Brutus’s years in America, he formed a bond with Lamont B. Steptoe, a native of Pittsburgh and today one of Philadelphia’s most prominent poetic voices. Steptoe, an American Book Award winner and Pew Fellowship recipient, has published 8 books of poetry and edited two collections of Brutus’ work. Steptoe is a Vietnam Veteran, an activist, and a photographer. He has graciously allowed us a glimpse into his archives of correspondence with Brutus, including unpublished poems, as well as his own verse written in honor of Brutus.

SUMMER â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;10 please forgive the inelegance of this cluttered desk; i have lost someone today. the sun boils the asphalt, catches in the hair of children, summons from the high rises armies of men in dark suits, withers the plants, passes the time. with every unwanted phone call I receive, the subway doors shut, the air conditioning preserves me, and another sleek train

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hurtles into the unplumbed darkness from which there is no return service.

Lauren Strenger

137

138

DEFEND THE HONOR Who will defend the honor of the Congolese rape victims? There has been no convening of the great council of grand bubu wearing imperialist, whose daughter’s lie safe in each other’s arms at Swiss boarding schools. Nelson Mandela has made no appeal on their behalf, there is no sign of the war apparatus of the Zulu Nation, we do not hear the beat of the drum summoning the wrath of the ancestors, no juju conjuring Marabou’s in sight! We cannot see the militia marching just over the hill, no jihad has been called, the Americans will not send fighter planes to defend them, the Queens navy will not launch a single vessel to avenge them; These decedents of Sheba, distant cousins of Mensa Musa, poor relations to Nefertiti, great, great, grand nieces of Askia,

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kinfolk to Hannibal! Mother, sisters, daughters, nieces, wombs defiled by the diseased jism of rapist butchers, clitoris torn and mangle, spirits crushed, forced into oblivion by this atrocity! Is there no one to defend the honor of our dethroned Queen?

Aziza Kinteh

140

A NEST ABOVE

The open door and April’s bright light washing in. Lumbering bees harvest wood from the lintel. They leave behind perfectly round holes, echoes of motory humming. The darkness resides in your chest, the wrong cells growing— God willing, they’ll go, science aligned with blue snows of hydrangea, a perfect graft of stem cells, tongue and groove rows smoothly fitting with the flourishing tree

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of your spine, greening us back into belief. Miraculous as the empty tomb and strewn clothes, may the darkness halt in its tracks, lift its fierce chin and shambling flanks and simply go. Each night the howling more separate from you. Each call a wave that wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be met, peaks fading with morning. All along the Beaverkill, wrens and finches, warblers and kingfishers are at it againâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; hidden by profuse lanterns of bloom.

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Horse hair loose of the curry, chestnut strands from a young girlâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hair, one long curl laced with another. With this and that, they make their wayâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; neither beggars nor choosers but gatherers gathering the unused riches of our days.

Catherine Staples

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TOBY ALTMAN lives with his dog and friends in Philadelphia. His chapbook Asides is forthcoming in the Summer of 2012 from Split Leaves Press. His poems have recently appeared in The Adirondack Review and Philadelphia Stories. NINA “LYRISPECT” BALL has performed all around the U.S. and Canada, and has shared stages with Mos Def, Conya Doss, Kenny Lattimore, Eric Benet and many others. A Baltimore native with strong roots in Philadelphia, she is one fifth of Spoken Soul 215 and host of monthly open mic The Harvest. Her work is featured both locally and nationally, and is the recipient of the Sonia Sanchez Women’s Studies Award and The NAACP/Center Stages Young Playwrights Festival award. PETER BAROTH is a Philadelphia area writer, artist, and musician. He is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis and Temple Law School. He has published a novel, Long Green (iUniverse), and a poetry chapbook, Ski Oklahoma (Wordrunner Chapbooks). He won the 2009 Amy Tritsch Needle Award in poetry. RACHEL BROWN graduated with a BA in mathematics and nine houseplants. Her work has also been published in a recent edition of PANK magazine. THEO BROWN writes poetry, prose, and plays and was a winner of the 2009 Philadelphia Young Playwrights’ Annual Playwriting Festival. He his a student at the Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts. SAM BURKE was the winner of the grade 10-12 division of the 2010 Montgomery Country Youth Poetry Contest. STEVE BURKE has been published in the Mad Poets Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, and Spitball. He has been a featured reader at the Free Library’s Monday Series, the Big Blue Marble Bookstore, the Green Line Poetry Series, & the original Painted Bride Gallery. He lives in the Mount Airy section of Philadelphia with wife-Giselle and daughter-Mariah and has worked for many years as a labor and delivery nurse. MARIE-ANTOINNETE CLARK is a senior at Upper Darby High School, and will be attending Cabrini College to study Criminology and Sociology. She is a member of Philadelphia Youth Poetry

Movement, and has competed in their semi-finals. The first poem she ever read was Crystal Stair by Langston Hughes. ANGELO COLAVITA has been reading his stories and poems throughout his native Philadelphia for the past decade. In addition to his literary work, he has written and produced two theater pieces, Audience and The Cage & The Hearteater. JIM CORY is a PA Arts Council and Yaddo fellow whose poems have recently appeared, or are about to, in Burp, Fell Swoop, Fuck!, Court Green, 5 AM, Lungful!, Skidrow Penthouse and unarmed journal. Favorite words include: pestiferous, palaver, pulchritude, and piece-of-ass. No Brainer Variations, a thoroughly obnoxious chapbook, is the winner of Rain Mountain Press’ 2010 Ron Wardell Prize and will be published by those good people shortly. He lives in Philadelphia and can be reached at coryjim@earthlink.net. JUSTIN CHING hails from Los Angeles, California, and serves as the Director of The Excelano Project, the University of Pennsylvania’s award winning poetry collective. He was a winner of the Collegiate Union Poetry Slam Invitational, 2009 national championship and has shared the stage with Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, and Anis Mojgani, among others. Justin works with the Youth Arts & Self-Empowerment Project to bring poetry to local Philadelphia jails and recently served as Chair of the School District of Philadelphia’s Comprehensive Committee for Racial and Cultural Harmony. J.A. CURCIONE is a playwright and short story writer from Philadelphia, PA. He has published stories in several magazines, his latest including The Cynic Online Literary Magazine and Instigatorzine. As an actor he has most recently worked with sketch comedy troupe “The Dependable Felons”. His play, “Rough Beast” was recently produced in Philadelphia where he has also workshopped, in conjunction with Tabard Inn Productions, his newest play “The Garden.” JOSEPH DORAZIO’s poems have appeared in Spoon River Poetry Review, Boston University’s Clarion Journal, Nerve Cowboy, The Maynard, and elsewhere. NICK FORREST will be working on APIARY from afar in the coming years as he writes at the University of Montana, but hopes you will send him postcards in the meantime.

ZACHARY HAYES grew up in Whiting, New Jersey, a town next to the site of the Hindenburg crash. He moved to the Philadelphia area to attend school, and has plans to move to West Philly this spring. His favorite word in either Spanish or English is vagabundear. SON HUYNH is a 6th grader at John H. Taggart Elementary. He likes blood and gore and war video games, but also loves animals, and is always looking to make a new friend. His name means mountain in Vietnamese. DREW KALBACH lives in Philadelphia. He is the author of CAN’T ACTION (forthcoming, Cow Heavy Books 2011) and of THE ZEN OF CHAINSAWS AND ENORMOUS CLIPPERS (Achilles Chapbook Series 2008). ANDREW KOLBENSCHALG is a writer from Howell, New Jersey. He is currently living in Trenton, New Jersey. His short stories have appeared in Instigatorzine, and he was featured in The College of New Jersey’s 2010 Student Reading Series. BLAISE LARAMEE was born and raised in Philadelphia, attends Central High School, and is involved in frisbee, musical production and visual art. Blaise explores life, death, love and spirituality is his verse, but his most recurring topic is poetry itself. NICK LEPRE is a graduate of Emmanuel College in Boston. He has been published previously in The Threepenny Review. He lives and works in Cambridge, Massachusetts. WARREN LONGMIRE is one of the founding members of the Excelano Project Spoken Word Collective. He has been published in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Pax Americana, Mad Poets:San Francisco, and the 16th and Mission Review. You can read his work in his chapbook “Ripped Winters” and see him monthly at the Mosaic Reading series. ALEYAH K. MACON is a student at the Philadelphia High School for the Creative and Performing Arts. JANET MASON is an award winning writer of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry whose literary commentary is regularly featured on This Way Out, an international radio syndicate based in Los Angeles and aired on more than 400 radio stations in the U.S. and also in Australia, New Zealand, and throughout Europe. She is also the author of Hitching To Nirvana : a novel (Cycladic Press). Tea Leaves: a memoir

of mothers and daughters will be published by Bella Books in 2012.Â Her chapbooks of poetry, include When I Was Straight (Insight To Riot Press) and a woman alone (Cycladic Press).You can visit her at www.amusejanetmason.com NINA MELITO writes out of a second-story window on Poplar street. She studies at Temple University. TESSA MICAELA binds books, supports women during childbirth and works towards reproductive justice. She writes about cities real and imagined, monumental and minute and believes in the transformative power of language. In a former home she co-hosted the Never on Time reading series and journal project, and is still on the lookout for other community poetry events. Currently she is working on a poem series of letters without recipients called Without Winter. She can be reached at tessamicaela@gmail.com. MICHELLE MYERS is a spoken word poet, community activist, and educator. She is a founding member of the spoken word poetry group Yellow Rage, a dynamic duo of Philly-based Asian American female spoken word poets; the group is best known for appearing on the first season of the criticallyacclaimed HBO television series Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry. She holds a PhD in English from Temple University and is currently an Assistant Professor and Reading/ Writing Faculty Specialist in the Central Learning Lab at CCP. Read more at yellowrage.com ON POINT INK is a Philly based artistic collective made up of Steve Megga, Alisha Dantzler, Lindo, and BlackCancer aka Rell. They are mentos to youth in the Mural Art Program and Germantown Poetry Festival, and speak at various coferences, creating dialogue around social issues in the surrounding areas of Philadelphia. On Point Ink has performed in New Jersey, Baltimore and Washington, DC. ISABEL RAMOS is the winner of the 2011 American Voices Award, a member of the Philadelphia Writing Project, and a student at Masterman High School in Philadelphia. KAREN RILE is the author of Winter Music, a novel set in Philadelphia, and numerous works of fiction and creative nonfiction. Her work has appeared in publications such as The Southern Review, American Writing, Creative Nonfiction, and Other Voices, and has been listed among The Best American Short Stories. She teaches fiction and creative nonfiction at the University of Pennsylvania.

JACOB RUSSELL lives in South Philly with Murphy-the-Cat and Spirit Stick. His work has appeared in dcomP, Criiphoria 2, Conversational Magazine, Connotations, BlazeVox, Scythe, Battered Suitcase, Clockwise Cat, Apiary, Fox Chase Journal, Connotations, Dance Macabre, Pedestal, and Retort, and he has two chapbooks: THE POEM TREE (available with decorated one-of-a-kind covers), and Chronic Chronos Kairos, the first Rondo of his POEM FOR THE END OF MY DAYS. He manages the literary blog: Jacob Russell’s Barking Dog. ENRIQUE SACERIO-GARI’s poem Monodia Polifonica (Polyphonic Monody) has been published in Spanish in Cuba in Poemas interreales (La Habana: Editorial Letras Cubanas, 2004) and in the journal Diálogo (Chicago: Center for Latino Research, DePaul University, summer 2007). JACLYN SADICARIO is a New Yorker, poet-student living in Philadelphia, in her last year of studying English, Psychology, and Women’s Studies. She is currently the Executive Creative Editor of Hyphen, Temple University’s Undergraduate Literary and Art Magazine. She is the proud owner of two cats, a comfortable chair, and a diverse collection of vinyl records. More of her work can be found in her blog, jaclynsadicario.blogspot.com. CATHERINE STAPLES teaches in the Honors program at Villanova University and has published in Blackbird, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, Third Coast, The Michigan Quarterly Review, West Branch and others. Honors include the University of Pennsylvania’s William Carlos Williams Award, two APR Distinguished Poets’ Residencies, and The New England Poetry Club’s Boyle/ Farber Award. Last month, she was named a finalist for the May Swenson Poetry Award, Utah State University. Betsy Sholl selected her chapbook Never a Note Forfeit for Seven Kitchens Press’ 2010 Keystone Prize: Never a Note Forfeit is scheduled for release in May 2011. LAUREN STRENGER is a freshman at Temple University, studying history and splitting her time between the city and the sea. She enjoys playing video games, taking pictures of people’s eyes, having public transportation adventures and staying up too late. Lauren takes her coffee with milk but no sugar and has been making poetry ever since she learned how to write. JAMES ULMER received his BFA in Illustration and Design from The University of the Arts in 2005, has shown at many galleries locally and nationally, and is a member of Philadelphia artist collective Space 1026. See more of his work at jamesulmer.com and at space1026.com.