APIARY publishes work bywriters 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 !e Letters of Lamont B. Steptoe and Dennis Brutus

* * * 5 !is Just In Jim Cory7* She Homebound Michelle Myers 11 At the End of My Vision !eo Brown13 Biological Mother Alla Vilyanskaya14 !e House !at Moved J.A. Curcione20 Eve Nina Melito22* Butter"y E#ect On Point Ink26 Abbreviated Epic for Girl Scouts Toby Altman29 A Water Tale Karen Rile37 Polyphonic Monody Enrique Sacerio-Gari42 Fireworks for a Soldier Blaise Laramee43 Spontaneous Human Combustion Joseph Dorazio44 Star’s Isabel Ramos49* Paper Lantern Justin Ching53 On Returning Home: Laryngology Tessa Micaela 55 !e Robbery Nick Lepre71 Queens Summit Nina “Lyrispect” Ball78 Foreign Focus Jaclyn Sadicario80 Hitching to Nirvana (excerpts) Janet Mason88 New Growth Warren Longmire

90 !e Sad One Son Huynh91 Being and Doing Peter Baroth 93 Shade Zachary Hayes 100 In !is House Mariah Gayle102 Hypnagogia Angelo Colavita108 Round Midnight Marie-Antoinette Clark111 Poem Can’t Action Number Four Drew Kalbach114 !e Poem Tree Jacob Russell122 Gaviota Andrew Kohlbenschlag128 Strong Sam Burke130 Somnambulist Rachel Brown131 Ainu Steve Burke134 Move Aleyah K. Macon136 Summer ‘10 Lauren Strenger139 Defend the Honor Aziza Kinteh141 A Nest Above Catherine Staples144 !e Fork and Knife Together 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 !rst 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 !lm 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 social-media’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. "is 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 near-constant 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 coupReport: !red admiral rips through parts of MississippiWork at Home: Break out of the Manson RanchPope: Sex can become ‘a !nal resting reef ’Wife’s beer fortune became ‘like a drug’Skimpy prom dress lands teen in ZimbabweL.A.’s cupcake boom won’t prevent Alzheimer’sMom who caged teen son rips down buildingsChina’s giant pandas survive brain cancer Governor seeks fees to help !ght harmful nipple creamViolence breaks out over jumping ducklingsPirates charged with luggage rageSunbathing 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 probePoll: Half say ‘struck by lightning’Cory, “"is just in…”, cont.

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2.

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

Jim Cory

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SHE HOME-BOUNDFor Brenda McMillan and Myong Myers

"e ache to die in the place that She had lived began in her feet,this yearning for crossing a thresholdthat She could call her own.And her feet bore the ache downdeep as She walked through lifesearching for a place to die.But this place could not be theland in which She was born forrestless feet had carried her from post-warKorea, fatherless and therefore nameless,a might-as-well-have-never-been-born existence,on child-sized feet that bore witness tomoving spaces to which She hadno connection.And when the sky !nally fell under theheavy hand of a cruel uncle and lovelessstepfather, her bare feet sweptShe and her younger sister alongsuspiciously shifting mountain roads seemingly!lled with growling horangi—tigers—to stand ona train platform to Seoul

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singing songs for candyand sleeping on benches, trusting the kindness of passing strangers toget them on the right rain tosomewhere-other-than-here.But her sister’s feet did not bear thesame kind of aching and soretraced footprints in retreat withan exhaling breath reserved fora resigned return to the onlyplace the sister had ever known.And since She could not call this home,She let her sister go andkept 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 #uid earth,seeking refuge in solid ground thather feet could root into.And it was this primal connection to the landthat made her feet thirstyand, therefore, impatient.So they clung to the !rst bit of rocky ground to stretch underfoot andbeing tired and lacking the restlessde!ant spirit She once had,

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She relented to her aching feet andset down roots in this cold soil,almost barren of water and light.Yet She willed herself to stretch upward andoutward and a home grew from her !ngertips,and beneath the encircling canopy of her arms,a dandelion daughter anda dandelion sonmanaged to spring from the precarioussoil and while the seasons came and left,the winds ever relentlesslypushed and moved the dryunreliable dirt around her,exposing her agingbrittlemalnourished andlong-forgottenfeet.When the dandelion daughter and son bore witness to this,they cried salty tears that onlymade her feet more root bound.And as the winds howled heartlesslyaround them, the dandelion sonand daughter tried to dig her out but soon

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understood her feet had become too!rmly planted and She would only leave this place if She were ripped out orcut away.So in the time they had left,they messaged her aching feet as bestthey could until the winds became toopowerful and the dandelion son blew away on wispy seeds that wanderedaimlessly on precocious air currents."e dandelion daughter watched her brother untilhe was out of sight then turned andpleaded with She in desperation:“Please just pull up your feet and walk away!”But even as She heard her dandeliondaughter’s words and felt the land beneathher 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 blewher dandelion daughter away withthe hopeful wish that wispy seeds would!nd !rm footing on solid groundsomewhere-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 !sh hooks and bait made to resemble the

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artistic !ngers of writers, painters, and warlords.

At the end of my vision, I witnessed the smoke rise from the muzzle of a ri#e 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 !re, and tasted ash in this world where art and beauty held no place.

"eo Brown

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BIOLOGICAL MOTHER

Mother Russia Grandfather LeninTovarish StalinWhat was your dream?

Was it pure, like the black seaAnd when did it contaminate?

Drinking your own blood out of a gold goblet New Russians, Old Poverty Old ladies, designer shawls Selling sun#ower seeds Ripe fruit bitter With taste of pogroms

Un!t mother, speak your tongue My soul, a fossil In your earth.

Alla Vilyanskaya

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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. $"e 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 o% 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 #oor. $She watched the edge of her !ngernails run across the lip of the table. $"e 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 !ngers before slamming his hand down on it. $He found a voice strangely quieter than his !st. $“"is thing never worked.”

“"e noise used to keep me up when we !rst 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.

"e house rumbled beneath them and began to move again. $"ey

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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. $“"at doesn’t make any sense.” $A snow squall blew behind him in the window. $"ey had moved again. $"e old slate roof of the abandoned school building on their block could be seen in the distance. $"e closer roo#ines 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. $"ere are some things I couldn’t !t. $Say

one?”“One’s !ne. $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 !rst saw the place, a long !nger 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 !lthy yellow and cracking it further. $"en she tried three successive colors, each one darker than the last, to conceal it. $"ree 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. $"en she watched it all night long. $She sat on the kitchen table with her knees crossed staring, daring the crack to come back. $"e next morning he came to the kitchen for breakfast, saw her crying and saw the crack in the wall. $He couldn’t help but

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laugh. $She stared at him angrily while his back was turned and in one !nal !t 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 o% 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. $"e 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 !nally the house began to shift underneath them. $"ey were unsure, by the afternoon, who wanted it to go !rst but that was academic now. $"ey did notice the shaking walls initially but that soon disappeared into the background. $"ey 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. $"ey 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

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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 co%ee 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. $"ere was a little blue bag he nudged from his path. $“Okay.”

"en there was a lurch. $"e 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 o% the wall and the shattered glass left a slice in the print she knew he wanted. $"e cup she had perched near the sink tumbled backward. $"ey 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 co%ee stains. $Neither one of them moved, though, still watching it. $It was now almost evening.

He pointed to the #oor. $“Don’t cut your feet.”“I won’t.”“I’ll get the broom.”“No. $"at’s okay.” $She moved closer to him, raising her long hair

like a curtain against the kitchen. $She thought about touching his coat, she

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hadn’t seen him take it from the closet. He put his hand against the wall, his !ngers bumping along clumps

of paint badly applied by a previous tenant. $“Okay.”She looked at him then. $"ere 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. $"e faces of the houses that surrounded it were all di%erent, the cars that lined the street were unknown. $"ere 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. $"e 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. $"e house that moved was even a di%erent 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

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AN ABBREVIATED EPIC FOR THE GIRL SCOUTS

1.

At Normandy, they landed in skis and snow-shoes,ready to stamp out whiskey and pornography. $$No one told them it was summer. $$"ey did not make it o% 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 $$such as her! sloshed, peddling thinmints and peanut-butter oolongs $$in the parking lot after church.

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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, $$$$$$$dressed himself in feathers:"at night, our closets were !lled with parrots, $$$$$$white and silent, each, a fallen scout.

4.

"at we do not forget when they held the cathedral at Mon Pierre, with only cigarettebutts and salmon snouts—

$$$$$$six hours againstGermans, enough time for the sonderkommandoto build a monument to his wife, a scoutherself, who turned into a bee-hive when her husband joined the Nazis—

$$$$$that we may not forget those scouts!

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

Toby Altman

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POLYPHONIC MONODY

1. Brother underthe rubblesand shepherdwithout a namewho searched for greennessand became a nationbetween two rivers,I bring you before the sunand the moonso they can see your faceand your hair,for the earth to quakeagainst a battle so unjustand the stars to neighagainst the !refrom afarthat fellupon your bed.

You were a father

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in your dwellingin your landheart of a herdfrom the desertbranches by the bankof the waters…and they transformedyour wheat into thistlewithin your eyesbefell bare hillsand dead waters.

You died in life, you shall live in the rainthat searches for its ponds.

2. Sister widowin the afternoon without a morningyou preparelamb wrappedwith eggplant(tongue of the judge)that resoundsand denounces the crimes

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against your people.If you only hada neighbor of peace!If you only hadshelter on the roadaway from the war!"ey shoot arrows,murderous tongues#ocks of falsehoodand uniforms disguisedas the desertpoisoningyour streams."e lament of your eyesshall return to townto awaken a united cryand destroy the hideoutsof the jackals.

3.Boys and girls,white shroudson living shoulders,life returns to the windows

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and the newly swept streetshear a funeral elegy

Will the nations understand this?Who will press the triggerof a camerato show us the bloodin the rivers that borderthe cradles spatteredby civilization?

"e cattle bellows,the storks #eetheir nests,and mothers lifttheir smiling children,shrouded in whitein the scopesof the soldiersof the candidates

Enrique Sacerio-Garí

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ON RETURNING HOME: LARYNGOLOGY

when I arrived everything was di!erent the moths thathad "itted around the light were still and overturned the cupboards were empty except for a can of condensed milk 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 "oor had come up to meet me

when I arrived I sat on my shins # lilies like twisted $ngers 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 "oor 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

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mammals ! !!!!!!and I think mine are broken !! the cupboards were empty the moths were still on the table

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

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FEATURE:

the letters of LAMONT B.STEPTOE andDENNIS BRUTUS

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Dennis Vincent Brutus, 1924!2009.

Dennis Brutus, poet and lifelong activist, !rst came to the United States in 1977. By that point, he had already served as a vital force in South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement, focused on expelling South Africa from the Olympic Games. After su%ering a gunshot wound to the back during his arrest, Brutus wrote his !rst two volumes of poetry while imprisoned on Robben Island – 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, !rst at Northwestern University. He then taught brie#y 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 Congress’s political stance. "is led him to broaden the scope of his activism to a worldwide push for economic justice and a resistance of globalization by corporate entities.

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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.

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SUMMER ‘10

pleaseforgive the inelegance of this cluttered desk;i havelost someone today.

the sunboils the asphalt, catches in the hair of children,summonsfrom the high rises armies of men in dark suits,withers theplants,passes thetime.

with every unwanted phone call I receive,the subway doorsshut,the air conditioningpreserves me,and another sleek train

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hurtles into the unplumbed darknessfrom which there is no return service.

Lauren Strenger

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138

DEFEND THE HONOR

Who will defend the honor of the Congolese rape victims? "ere has been no conveningof the great council of grand bubu wearing imperialist, whose daughter’s lie safe in each other’s armsat 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 !ghter planes to defend them, the Queens navy will not launch a single vessel to avenge them;

"ese 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 de!led 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 $

"e open door and April’s bright light washing in. Lumbering bees harvest wood from the lintel.

"ey leave behindperfectly round holes, echoes of motory humming."e darkness resides

in your chest, the wrongcells growing—God willing, they’ll go,science aligned

with blue snowsof hydrangea, a perfect graft of stem cells, tongue and groove rows

smoothly !ttingwith the #ourishing 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 !erce chinand shambling #anks and simply go.Each night the howling

more separate from you. Each calla wave that won’t be met,peaks fading with morning.

All along the Beaverkill,wrens and !nches,warblers and king!shers are at it again—

hidden by profuse lanterns of bloom.

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Horse hair loose of the curry,

chestnut strands from a young girl’shair, one long curllaced with another.

With this and that, theymake their way—neither beggars nor choosersbut 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$#e Adirondack Review$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 !fth of Spoken Soul 215 and host of monthly open mic "e Harvest. Her work is featured both locally and nationally, and is the recipient of the Sonia Sanchez Women’s Studies Award and "e 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-!nals. "e !rst 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 #e Cage & #e 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 "e 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 #e Cynic Online Literary Magazine and Instigatorzine.$ As an actor he has most recently worked with sketch comedy troupe “"e 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 “"e Garden.”

JOSEPH DORAZIO’s poems have appeared in Spoon River Poetry Review, Boston University’s Clarion Journal, Nerve Cowboy, #e 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 "e 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 #e #reepenny 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 !ction, creative non!ction, and poetry whose literary commentary is regularly featured on "is 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.$ 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 !rst season of the critically-acclaimed 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. "ey 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 !ction and creative non!ction. Her work has appeared in publications such as #e Southern Review, American Writing, Creative Non$ction, and Other Voices, and has been listed among #e Best American Short Stories. She teaches !ction and creative non!ction 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 !rst 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, #e Southern Review, #ird Coast, #e Michigan Quarterly Review, West Branch and others. Honors include the University of Pennsylvania’s William Carlos Williams Award, two APR Distinguished Poets’ Residencies, and "e New England Poetry Club’s Boyle/ Farber Award.$ Last month, she was named a !nalist 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 co%ee 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 "e 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.