NYSAI Press 1
Staten Island Literary Magazine
fall issue 2014
2 Exphibian
EXPHIBIANE�������� B���� Editor-in-Chief: Jenna Snyder Managing Editor: Eric Alter
Poetry Editors: Eric Alter, Amy Leigh Cutler, Thomas Fucaloro, and Frank Williams Prose Editors: Julie Bentsen and Vlad Kanevsky Art Editors: Laura Hetzel and Julia Simoniello
NYSAI.ORG FACEBOOK.COM/NYSAI PRINTED ON THE ISLE OF STATEN DESIGNED BY JENNA SNYDER COPYRIGHT: All rights revert to the author upon publication. Cover image by Keri Sheheen Inside cover image by Julie Bentsen
Copyright © 2014 NYSAI Press
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editor’s note Dear Readers, Exphibian appears to you through the lingering haze of dissolution: a community disabused of community. Our protectors, clothed as patriots. Our bigots, clothed as activists. Our con�lict is entertainment and our reasoning is disavowal. While we are distracted by traf�ic patterns and Candy Crush, people who don’t care about us are installing ferris wheels and taking our neighborhoods. Although it seems we are born transient victims of the same mortal trick; we must not heed the temptation to become idle passerby, alone on our island.
At times, Exphibian champions the voice of the other—and at times, it is everything the other is not. However, never is it unscathed by its reality.
I hope that you can �ind the time to celebrate the writers and artists in this magazine who found the courage to address you. Jenna Snyder
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Exphibian
contents
poetry
Joel Allegretti / The Milk Carton Poem.........................................................................................12 Ryan Buynak / Better Cancel Lunch...............................................................................................29 Amitabh Vikram Dwivedi / Father................................................................................................34 Mansu Edwards / The Native and The Visitor............................................................................23 Jack Freedman / Oh, Hell No.............................................................................................................15 Howie Good / Pointless Weirdness.................................................................................................20 Aimee Herman / Alms..........................................................................................................................38 Vicki Iorio / Crossing Over.................................................................................................................25 Vicki Iorio / Here is Your Future.....................................................................................................11 William James / Scavenger................................................................................................................16 Kelly Jones / I’ve Tried to Erase This Image...............................................................................24 Andrew Jordie / 90s Fever/The Lower-Middle........................................................................8 Sean Van Kleeff/ iGoogledU..............................................................................................................18 Dean Kritkos / On the Blade’s Edge of August..........................................................................14 Len Lawson / Blonde-haired Blue-eyed Jesus Bobble Head................................................31 Efrayim Levenson / Baby....................................................................................................................35 Eliel Lucero / The Boy Next Door.....................................................................................................39 Sheila Murphy / Gradually, More.....................................................................................................36 Rhoda Pierce / What Place is This..................................................................................................28 Kenneth Pobo / It Sticks......................................................................................................................42 Lys Riganti / No Longer.......................................................................................................................7 John Snyder / Why I always go to the Woods in my Poems..................................................41 Felino Soriano / Pensive......................................................................................................................21
art
Kristi Beisecker.......................................................................................................................................37 Julie Bentsen.............................................................................................................................................Inside Cover Christina Conte........................................................................................................................................26, 27 David DiLillo.............................................................................................................................................10, 40 Ira Joel Haber...........................................................................................................................................7, 22, 30 Sam Jay........................................................................................................................................................13 Rena Parisi................................................................................................................................................20 Keri Sheheen............................................................................................................................................Cover Annie Virginia..........................................................................................................................................33 Chris X..........................................................................................................................................................17
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No Longer
Lys Riganti
Poetry no longer makes its way to my tongue or �ingers. It swims in my sky like unborn children waiting for the warmth of a womb that can bear them.
Ira Joel Haber
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90s Fever/The Lower-Middle Andrew Jordie
When you quit your job, you might �ind yourself in monkey socks smoking weed; or at least I did.
Contemplating the World Wide Web for a wireframe on which to build my next career, I started to think about what it was I wanted to be when I was a kid; with blonde hair, crooked bangs and an attitude so naïve it would have made Osama Bin Laden smile. A cardiovascular surgeon, the next Mia Hamm, the shortest supermodel to ever trip the catwalk, saving cats, a veterinarian, a hitchhiker or maybe an actress a bald-headed monk, a Rastafarian princess, I always wanted to go to Morocco because I loved the hats.
an astronaut, a detective, a muse, the world’s next female Picasso. I played the mandolin, the Irish drums and a game of American football. As my dreams crisscrossed into knots that supported the mattress upon which I laid my head, The same head of hair consistently full of knots, turning shades of green from the chlorine in a poorly kept suburban aquarium. Maybe I could be a doctor? Or I was told a nurse.
Maybe I could save the world? But there was no 401K.
Dreams spill from a well-kept mason jar, analyzed, plucked, rearranged and presented into what could be achieved: State school. Certi�icates. Athleticism. Poor sportsmanship and unions.
30K a year looked like gold, on a block of lower-middle class low lives just scraping to get by. If I were a boy, I would have gotten all C’s and joined the �ire department.
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Hanging out with the guys, looking good, saving lives but, now it looks like more lives were lost on that same suburban street; half-full of fathers but more open to unrealistic dreams. LinkedIn makes me feel like some type of Sheryl Sandburg.
So let’s all lean in, lean in real far until we are told what not to do, what not to say, that our ideas aren’t good enough and lucky we are pretty or else we wouldn’t have made it very far. We are all 7’s in a world of pro�itable 11’s and superior jeans, so keep dreaming. Maybe I’ll be a poet.
Jesus Christ- that would be great.
Maybe I’ll DJ with a balaclava on my head, betting the dance �loor what I’ll do next, sweaty kids in a Queens warehouse. I’ll be the Queen that night Or more likely the assistant Joker.
Maybe I’ll sell my dreams and hit the road but you can’t even do that anymore hitchhiking is illegal, hobos are frowned upon and girls with torn genes and four Buddhist tattoos will surely �ind their way behind bars. So let’s all stay home.
Lower-middle class suburbanites, on the road to success.
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David DiLillo
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Here is Your Future Vicki Iorio
Dateless you spend the last night of 1968 with your grandfather who doesn’t really know who you are he mistakes your bedroom for the bathroom hours before the ball drops
When you hear the news about Sharon Tate you are drinking Folgers instant coffee you remember she had a small part on the Beverly Hillbillies Your older sister goes to Woodstock she doesn’t come back you stay in your room the one grandpa used as a bathroom and listen to Jimi Hendrix on your suitcase record player In high school you work in a mom and pop �lorist Emile is the pop Every time you open the shop door the cold air and the smell hits you like a funeral
The night of your senior prom you make corsages and boutonnieres When your classmates pick them up you hide in the refrigerator You dethorn the roses stun them in cold water Emile sees your face tells you the only thing that matters is a day that starts with a good shit He waves his branch of a hand at you and goes back to the order sheets You marry your college sweetheart Penultimate moment before the I do’s you realize your mistake You are a rock dressed in wedding white Your husband fucks his paralegal in a Fort Lee motel your husband is a soldier and can’t get leave
You tell the labor room team
Every day is a misery He �inally moves out Orders of protection Custody battles You have a house �ire that kills your cats Your husband doesn’t sign off on the insurance checks And then he dies You get IBS This is a distraction It’s hard to problem solve when your body is a rancid melon You think of Emile long in the grave and his request of no �lowers
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The Milk Carton Poem Joel Allegretti
During the years John Lindsay, Abe Beame and Ed Koch served terms as mayor of New York City And what happened to
And to
And to
the space cadet in the West 8th Street record store in 1973 who �lipped through a rack of hippie posters and said, “I want it to be odd and sexual,” while his girlfriend grooved to “Yes We Can Can” by the Pointer Sisters? the bony black guitar player in Washington Square Park in the late ‘70s, the one with the bleach-blond hair, the lavender nail polish and the red plastic phallus around his neck, who sang the best version I’d heard of “All Along the Watchtower”? the pair of black hustlers who were selling their stuff outside a liquor store somewhere on the West Side on a Saturday night in ‘78? Or was it ‘79?
Where are you now,
‘70s Hare Krishna girls who solicited donations in the Port Authority Bus Terminal?
And where are
the top-and-bottom guys who posed on the cover of a magazine called Black Cocks, White Ass that hung in the display window of a 42nd Street porn shop in 1980 or so?
What about
the poet who showed up on the subway from time to time in ’81, ’82 or ‘83, the one who said she was trying to raise money to print her work and always recited the same poem?
And what of
the two white women who boarded a downtown train at 100-Something Street in the mid-‘80s, the ones in the black leather jackets and jeans, one of whom had lion’s-mane hair and a Jack Daniel’s face, who told her friend, “I love the subway; the smell, the odor”—and the other, who pressed the �ingertips of her left hand against the door, stared through the glass at the tunnel darkness and let a little softness creep out of her eyes?
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Sam Jay
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On the Blade’s Edge of August Dean Kritikos
Months named for hairy men in tunics. Stuffed peppers for breakfast and eggnog for dinner. (there is a way) In the center of your eye lies a goddess forgotten. On the fringes of your palm: trees and a picket fence. In the middle? *spits* : a goddess. No, a garden. In the middle of the novel there is a crisis. The plot thickens. In the beginning, there was darkness & silence. I shift lanes gazing skyward or at billboards; I write this. Something to the tune of: every instant contains millennia, etc.. The madness, then, of musicians—
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Oh, Hell No
Jack M. Freedman
Oh, hell no! The po po fo sho sho Gotta go go disrupt my �low �low Their weight they throw Finding blow on Joe Shmoe Making dough Eating doughnuts No mofo po po will bogart my ‘dro I’m no ho fo sho Ho-dee-ho-dee-ho Don’t jack my condo Don’t pass go Don’t collect mo dough Fo I am po No quid pro quo Go eat crow, mofo
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Scavenger
William James for the man on Mass. Ave. who cat-called my girlfriend while asking me for spare change.
Of course, I am not unaware of my blessings, & if it helps for you to believe it merely blind luck or fortune smiling upon a stranger, if it serves you well to consider it fate
which has delivered unto me this gift you crave, while the meat of past hunts still drips wet & red, glistening from your lips, then call it luck & let despair fall heavy, a blanket of ash settling thick on your tongue. Consider the �ields are ripe for harvest, & all before you are merely wheat beneath the scythe. There is no debt
to be repaid, no karma demanding recompense. The way my lover’s hands fold into my own is no simple transaction no collection of coins to jangle in your cup.
You throw your lust like a spear, at prowl on the open plain as though any creature which catches your gaze is �lesh for your feasting. You stuff your cheeks
to the point of bursting & fatten yourself – a glutton devouring without ceasing. Oh, you jealous wolf, snap shut your jaws, before the carrion falls from your teeth,
before the stink of stale blood on your breath draws a larger predator than you, before the sun’s decay reveals every dry bone you have gnawed on, tossed aside & left to rot.
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Chris X
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iGoogledU
Sean Van Kleeff On the way to the union square stop the train came to a halt and i saw you A single gasp became the life of me As my hands �iddled my newest technology The click of digital photo is hidden by the screech of our NYC subway car I have captured you You have become mine I crop the picture down to size and use an app I just downloaded that lets me compare the photo taken to every facebook page therefore linking me to your twitter feed and Lo and Behold You love coffee! Me too! A dunkachino checked in at the union square D & D 101 east 16th at 8:10 am You are so right, Debra America runs on this Facebook says you’re attending NYU Tisch school of the arts building located at 721 broadway an illustrious program from the google reviews You, are an artist and i stare at the snapshot that started us Invent the event that made us true A wedding all down to the font on the invition I downloaded a great design program and attached our names to this creation of mine I hope you will notice how much of an artist that I am too Today I found an app that takes the features from our faces in both of our snapshots and combines them to make one And Debra it was a son We made a son He had my nose and cheekbones your green eyes but his smile Debra His smile was his own He was so happy
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I think back to the day we met on the subway I was so nervous Almost dropping the phone I found you with My pet I am so loyal to you but you have stopped drinking coffee no longer sharing our morning glance My coffee just doesn’t taste the same without you anymore I saw you come out of class today and followed you... from a distance past washington square park down bleecker all the way to your house You know, the blue one on 8th and Bank The whole way wanting to call out your name Tell you I can ful�ill all of those desires you tweet so frequently but as you get to your door you turn and those green eyes our son wears stare into mine You say “what’s your problem why are you following me” I want to say because I’m home tell you that I am incomplete that our son is waiting Duncan is waiting Wish you to let me in so we can be his smile Something new I start to spill my cup as I pull a giftcard from my pocket 10 Free Coffees inscribed to Debra For your new spot, Lenny’s on 9th street and 6th ave You take it and after a moment You say “how did you know...” Through my single lonely tear-stricken face I stare into your eyes, our son’s eyes and say I googled you Debra I googled you
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Pointless Weirdness Howie Good
1 Whatever is obsolete is free for the taking. I have a box full of photographs I’ve taken of clouds! The process is one of clinging to outlaw fragments �loating around me. Pointless weirdness gets old fast, but I can’t help myself. Buddy Holly looked right at my mother at the show in Duluth three days before the plane crash. 2 While waiting in the express lane (a serious misnomer!) at the supermarket, I study the candy rack and then the magazines, my eyes catching on the cover of People, even though none of the names in the megawatt rainbow lettering are familiar to me, or their disembodied faces either, and I’m struck, not for the �irst time, by our casual insertions into ideological circuits, but mostly by the fact that I’m somewhere on the fringes of an ever-moving mass, like the sick and the weak and the slow, easy meals for lions and hyenas. 3 We stop in front of the stained glass of Abraham raising the knife. Who is that, you ask, Elijah? The exhibit goes on for another �ive white, sterile rooms. Behind every work of art lies an uncommitted crime, Abraham grasping Isaac’s hair. It’s the season’s hottest trend, an ongoing crisis of representation, populated by ghosts and old men. I have a hole in my head I want you to �ill with a tongue kiss.
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Pensive
Felino Soriano nomad-sentence structure (sequences cannot isolate re�lectional conformity to a within data complement wholeness-lingo mobilization promise-old sepia conformity construct window-open lucid seeing tree �ixate premise upon the antique silhouette outlining paradigm of believing functionality as whole-body dif�icult move-onward signature of age’s rhyme with abridged ossi�ication) d
i
s
c
o
n
n
e
c
t
e
d
concept-unclarity held/-in
my hand a silent hand then of hand/hand momentary admit aloneness is the jazz-wing-fundament �inding
in the plural of my listening
rhythm s
of my gathering
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Ira Joel Haber
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The Native And The Visitor Mansu Edwards
Why are you jealous of me? I’m a mirror image of you. Come give me a hug brother. I’m not African. My roots are chitlins and fatback. I wear jeans and button up shirts. No, my brother your roots are fufu and chicken yassa. Take my daishiki and ku�i. No, I don’t want it. Why do you hate yourself brother? I don’t, I hate you for not associating with my people. Your people are my people. We’re just from different destinations. If we’re the same, then, why don’t you hire us? I see brother. But, where’s the ambition of Martin Luther King? But, what happened to each one teach one? I don’t see Marcus Garvey’s self suf�iciency. I thought it takes a village to raise a child. Blame will never free you. We come to America for education and success. Not to beg for freedom. There is no freedom if we’re separate but equal.
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I’ve Tried to Erase This Image Kelly Jones
After Saddam Hussein’s execution my friend’s unit was stationed at one of his castles. In the picture he emailed me: soldiers, Humvees, weapons, camou�lage, potted �lowers, and some men barbecuing meat. Rows of palm trees are off to the sides, like paradise, like Hollywood, places tourists �lock to. It almost looked like a bachelor party, those suntans and smiles.
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Crossing Over Vicki Iorio
Wire down on Sixth Ave can’t get across the street where Rite Aid keeps my antidepressants
I stay in my apartment on hot weekends with my medicated cocktails I’ve picked up Moby Dick again my college copy dead �ish stiff and yellow
My college lover’s tongue tasted like peppermints his major was animal husbandry he became a dairy farmer in upstate New York
I could have been the wife of a dairy farmer last week when I went to the fortune teller she gave me back my money closed my palm and made the sign of the cross I can’t shake off the feeling that zombies are following me it’s the antidepressants my therapist says
She says the new dosage will take some time to kick in if I could get across Sixth Avenue I could start the dosage but the fucking wire is too big for the chronically depressed to cross over
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Christina Conte
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What Place is This Rhoda Pierce
Does it matter?
Can this be a city but looking like grass? I should have taken a picture of the walking and the shoes under the bed, an eort to prove the existence of God. 2 shoes at night No shoes in the morning? God.
2 shoes at night 2 shoes in the morning?
Could be God. Could have come and gone.
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Better Cancel Lunch Ryan Buynak
there’s a snake coming out of a wine bottle below the table of nod.
there is blood from the previous poem spilling on her jeans in seamless dreams.
there is an empty stomach an empty church, a full-of-shit oily fool called Lola’s me. there is a world in whch we live where we suffer soft when Heaven was young.
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Ira Joel Haber
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Blonde-haired Blue-eyed Jesus Bobble Head Len Lawson
The �irst one thousand hand-clappin’ foot-stompin’ Holy Ghost-shoutin’ saints that can swim through the dead sea of sycophant souls cascading into the livest megachurch in town will receive their very own omnipresent omniscient omnipotent blonde-haired blue-eyed Jesus bobble head Who wouldn’t want their own image duplicated in silicone for hundreds of fans unless the image were made in dust by the billions (see the sixth day) Instead of checking the time on your phone now you can use your bobble head as a metronome Numbers on a digital clock do not nurture me I still yearn to be embraced by the hands of time Instead of asking what would Jesus do to a wristband now you can ask this totem of holiness anything and tap his head for the answer He always says yes
Forgive me if I don’t giggle at the doll’s continual af�irmation and I shake my head as he hung his in a heap at the ninth hour Pray for me if I don’t catch contagious laughter from his toothy grin and I marvel at his truth-stained face Please don’t judge me if I forsake the springs in his neck and choose the nails in his hands and please don’t prick your innocent �ingers tapping the crown of thorns around his head
Did we all just come to cheer like a fan in the stands then to watch a messiah do his thing in Technicolor audio/video UV LCD AC/DC multimedia satellite Wi�i super�icial narcissistic blonde and blue What African European Asian Hebrew or Native American idol are you cheering as it bounces on the dashboard of your spirit making you nauseous when you gaze faithfully into its wanting eyes its needing eyes its lusty thirsty sheep-gathering eyes hungry and jealous for the next serving of hot holy converts Why are you looking for the dead among the living NYSAI Press 31
Clutch this pseudo-porcelain doll tightly until the springs pop out before the answers �lood your bouncing scattered logic to manifest the prophecy in your tears while the head keeps answering yes yes yes to your every fear and doubt He still bears truth through his pain
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Annie Virginia
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Father
Amitabh Vikram Dwivedi He came to me We slept under the same roof I heard his breathing, snoring and other reptilian sounds It seemed to me He was tired of his life The life had quenched up his last red drop The empty sap was obvious from his sullen eyes He got up early in the morning A casual sign that he was living He waited for leave-taking He awaited a long The left note said: “My dear son-take care of yourself You’ve lots of things to see Before I see you off” He was not thirsty from his life But he hadn’t waited for leave-taking As it seemed to me I heard his parting, his going And he didn’t come to meet me again.
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Baby
Efrayim Levenson I have some bourbon you bring the baby sledge
We’ll get smashed and argue about the pig who tries to teach the camel the virtue of bathing in mud
He misinterprets the hospitality of his desert friend so self-convincingly he doesn’t even notice when he’s being spat in the face Then we’ll debate how the bear laughs at the pig while calling his bluff until we’re ready to kill each other
I assure you I’ll pass out drunk �irst I’m too old to have a soft spot but I’m bald enough for you to draw a bull’s eye on my skull
There are plenty of towels and cleaning supplies for the mess The bay is just up the road and there ought to be something in the yard you can tie around my neck to weigh me down It’s so quiet around here You can take my car There’s no need to rush You can be two states over by sunrise I’ll see you tonight Thanks for calling
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Gradually, More Sheila E. Murphy complex, as in sleeping
(sense of (sight
together, very simply (darkening changing where night �its
(�irst
equation
(upon
beginning a new
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(unto this
(praise
Kristi Beisecker
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Alms
Aimee Herman She let me grab her left hand and sit it in mine; I could have read her lines for hours. She held novels within each crease. I traced each �inger as though I had never seen one before; hers could have lead me to believe in anything. She told me mine were artist hands. You’ve crossed borders on your knuckles, haven’t you? she said. I could not call her beautiful because that word describes days or meals. She was more like a mountain. Dif�icult. High. A rubble of lives. Impossible to leave behind. I pressed my �ingers into her back. Rubbed at her energy: Yellow. Dim. Glow-in-the-dark.
I asked her to hold her gaze into my left eye for two minutes. I needed time to untwist the tether of her mind. 52 seconds, I tasted salt. One minute 7 seconds, she dripped fourteen yesterdays. One minute seventeen seconds, I saw why she �linched when I touched her chest. One minute thirty-one seconds and I felt everything from her twenties. One minute forty-nine seconds and I saw green and owls and could taste the elephant in her. Two minutes and I asked her what she felt. She smiled and I wanted to be homeless. She smiled and I wanted to be homeless so that I could beg her for the shelter living inside her. I can’t...I can’t speak, she said.
She turned her breath closer to mine and I let her move my hair, which was far longer than hers but more masculine. She whispered: Cement. I felt and saw cement.
We shifted into reading each other’s lips. Hers were small and she bit down on the bottom, reeling it in like something she had just caught. Her teeth, crooked and charming. I whispered into her left ear a paragraph from Fear and Loathing.
When midnight arrived, I asked her to drink tequila with me because earlier she called this the liquid that caused her self to be left behind.
We drank it on ice with some sour. We left our straws behind as I handed her my passport and went pageby-page, reading out each stamp. I wanted to kiss her but I am indelicate with my mouth and instead I press my chest to hers and we embrace.
Tomorrow, her palms will be hungover and I will wonder about the three identities I located inside her. I will try to place the name of the forest her smell reminds me of while �inding the remains of her salt still swimming in my skin. 38 Exphibian
The Boy Next Door Eliel Lucero
When I was four years old the boy next door came over to battle with green army men, or transformers or whichever plastic warrior of childhood were given to us by parents whose sole intention was to mold good strong men of us, but instead the boy, who was the same age and height as I, wanted to teach me how people on TV loved, so he took off his shoes, and I took off my shoes, and next came all our heavy clothes, so with nothing but space between us, we knew this to be a sacred private moment, so we swung the door’s hook into the tiny hole, and suddenly we were alone in the world, and his hand and mine touched and our lips fumbled together and tongues �lopped like dying �ish, until we climbed top bunk, covered our child �igures in sheet, hugged, kissed, mimicked sounds of soap opera, our only teachers of forbidden touch, but minutes later we were interrupted by Grendel’s screech and thud against our door, so the boy and I sat up and held on to one another, searching for some safety, and watched trembling as a knife slipped threw the shaft and lifted hook, so the door �lew open, and we jumped off our bunk and a hand wrapped in leather crashed into my chubby little thighs and arms, and the boy next door, whose name I don’t remember, was never allowed to cast an open eye on me again, and later, for the �irst time in my life, my own father sat down and taught me that love could be a sin, or maybe it was my mother, either way, what I didn’t forget was how soft the boy felt pressed to my chest.
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David DiLillo
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Why I always go to the Woods in my Poems John Snyder
If I could have made the choice based on desire instead of desperation I would’ve died there. It’s the �irst place I always run; The cliff, overlooking the beach. I couldn’t help but feel Wrapped.
Dirt was my family. Branches were the arms that could always hold. I found so many lost things. I was the single earring. I was the carving that made no sense--permanence without belonging. The sky was clear. The sky was cloudy. The sky was churning out black, little, drops. But it was always there I knelt at its feet, in awe that something so cold could be so open.
My bedroom ceiling never opened up for me. If I died on that �loor the room would be a cask for my youth. My blood would ferment. The wine of my death would not quench the Earth. The smell would haunt a home. Floorboards are no longer �loorboards when they’ve carried rivers. But I did not die. I did not rot.
I crashed inwards. And I clawed my way back out just so I could run again;
to the place where I could not die.
It Sticks
Kenneth Pobo In Sunday School we had a debate: If you are a Christian as a kid, but you fall away later, are you still saved? My Sunday School teacher said yes, you are still saved.
My minister said no, you weren’t really a believer or you wouldn’t fall away. We voted. Fifteen kids said yes, salvation sticks. 10 kids said it doesn’t. We went home to reruns of The Jetsons.
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upcoming
In January, 2015, NYSAI Press will begin to host monthly Slams, with the hopes of creating the very �irst Staten Island Slam Team, which will be on track to compete in nationals. On January 1st, submissions will re-open for the Spring 2015 edition of our literary magazine. If we are eligible for grant funding in 2015, then we will also begin acception chapbook manuscripts. If you are insterested in submitting, please visit nysai.org/submit As a part of the Second Saturday Art Walk, we will host Writer’s Block Party at Flagship Brewery on May 9th, 2015. Writer’s Block Party is a festival celebrating the literary arts on Staten Island. Expect poetry, music, art, and good beer!
thank you
NYSAI Press extends its deepest gratitude towards the local businesses and organizations that made this publication possible, and to you, the reader.
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“Miss Richmond county 2015 has a voice that can sink ships.” -NYSAI Press
“Yeti is a three-piece band with the ladies in control of the melodies. To put it simply Jenna Snyder is a force to be reckoned with. She is one helluva bassist.” -The Equal Ground
“Yeti is philosophical dream-punk with killer harmonies. This New York-based trio reeks of feral femininity, fermenting in the forgotten woods of Staten Island. Their music fuses Sleater-Kinney sensibilities with The Cranberries’ emotional power. Yeti can be found playing at various venues throughout the New York City area, or in very cold, dark, remote caverns from which few have ever returned.” -Club Culture, Arts Collective
NYSAI Press 49 photo by Laura Hetzel
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