Aforementioned and apt

This interview with Deneen Simpson, Director of Environmental Justice for the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, first appeared in our tenth print annual, available here. The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

apt Can you tell us a bit about your personal perspective on environmental justice and how that has informed your work?

Deneen Simpson Living in an…

Interview with Leslie Fields of the Sierra Club

This interview with Leslie Fields, National Director of Policy Advocacy and Legal for the Sierra Club, first appeared in our tenth print annual, available here. The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

  apt To start us off, can you share your perspective on environmental justice and how that has informed your work as a lawyer and an advocate?

Leslie Fields Environmental justice…

We’re pleased to announce that our tenth print issue, focused entirely on climate change, is now available for preorder.

We know that the last couple of months have been a difficult time for so many, our staff included. The world looked very different when we began working on this issue. Now, as we face a different kind of crisis, it would be easy to put other monumental challenges on the back burner. If this pandemic has taught us anything, though, it’s that we’re all deeply connected and we cannot solve one problem while ignoring others. The overlapping, intersecting problems of our world—coronavirus, climate change, economic inequality, racism, human rights, and so many more— must be viewed as systemic challenges that call for coordinated action to find solutions.

We hope that the stories, poems, essays, and visual art in this issue make a contribution to our shared understanding of the impacts that climate change has on people, cultures, and the natural world.

We’re so proud to be one of the sponsors for next week’s Writers for Migrant Justice: Poetry Reading & Fundraiser in Boston. We hope you’ll be there to support the work being done to help migrant families at our southern border. The organizers have gathered a stellar group of readers: Danielle Legros Georges, Natalie Shapero, Martín Espada, Nicole Terez Dutton, Jennifer Jean, U-Meleni Mhlaba-Adebo, Pablo Medina, Yara Liceaga Rojas, Willy Ramirez, and more.

A note from the organizers: “In a time where we are all asking What can I do? reading and hearing writing that holds witness to the ongoing cruelty and inhumanity happening at our border and, importantly, fundraising to help provide urgently needed aid to detained children and adults is a small and necessary action to help fight these injustices. Please join Boston’s literary community in protesting the actions of our government through poetry.”

If you can, we hope you’ll join us Wednesday, September 4th, 6-7:30pm at Arlington Street Church in Boston. Doors open at 5:30 p.m. Drinks, snacks, and appetizers available for purchase. Location is accessible. The event is free and open to the public, but donations are encouraged and appreciated.

We recently did an interview with Erica Charis-Molling of Mass Poetry, in which we talk about publishing, editing, and all of the wonderful and difficult parts of running a small press. You can read the full interview on Mass Poetry’s site.

We’ve just opened submissions for the tenth print issue of apt, due out in spring 2020. For this issue, we are seeking to publish new work that addresses climate change. Topics we’re especially interested in include:

Environmental, economic, and intergenerational justice

Community-based responses to climate change

Physical- and mental-health impacts of climate change

Biodiversity and species/ecosystem conservation

Environmental policy and programs

Intersectional views of climate change

Check out our guidelines page for full details about what we’re looking for and how to submit.

"Being hit by a teacher meant they cared. I was grateful. It was what I deserved. / It made me feel safe. / Being hit by my parents meant they cared. / They didn't hit me much." Sam Cha, "Why I Am Not a Pianist"

So it was summer, maybe. Summer in Seoul.

  *

  I remember feeling mute and expectant.

I was growing again into a quiet.

  *

  When I moved back to Korea I was seven and a half. I got on the plane late at night, on the 24th of January, 1986. I got off the plane and discovered it was early in the morning on January 26th.

I’ve traveled into the future, I thought, as I hugged my mother, who I didn’t…

"I know my skin: I live in it. Call it a house. Not haunted, not charmed." -- Matthew Morris, excerpts from "Tidal Wave"

My high school friends and I—college seniors now—left Buffalo Wild Wings after midnight. We had laser-tagged that evening, and then we had caroused. At the bar, Peter ordered a Sweet Baby Jesus. And I learned people sometimes fry pickles.

In the minivan, we groped for sound. I sat in back, ducking furniture. Jeremy handed me a cable, which I was to plug in, which I did. We drove into the night.

J…

"You practice tolerance for your students, who / only know you as you are now, / utterly ravaged. Who can blame / them for flinching as you lean in?" -- Devon Balwit, "Having No Great War, You Fight Your Own Closer to Home"

Wanting cannot make it so, but neither can Not-Wanting, and so the slog, sometimes slow, sometimes a-tumble.

You stare at this self, back-staring, eyes soft or not, depending on the day’s weather. Understandable how your assessment changes, a trick of the light—once more gilding, hair not quite so thin—or glaring, like a prison-klieg.

When you don’t peek, you can imagine yourself, twenty years…

"Does Abortion do everything Family does only backwards, in heels?" -- Abby Minor, Excerpt from "Gossiping Uncorsetted Jewesses: Some Interviews and Other Exquisite Business"

In their abstract figures, the mammoth shining kingdom of Family and the abject bloody queendom of Abortion reign over the American landscape like movie stars. The mood is orchestral, his hand on the small of her back, a painted skyline, feathers, shadows peeled from brick. Shadows licked and stuck to chenille.

Does Abortion do everything Family does only backwards, in heels?

My grandmother loved…

"Within an hour, the flowers would arrive, the waitstaff would appear, the tables get dragged around, the manager would shout orders and soon, piece-by-piece, the restaurant would transform. This pause was necessary before the night’s celebrations---like springtime, which needed the bareness of winter." -- Buku Sarkar, "Not Quite a Disaster"

At 9:15 the following morning, Anjali was dressed—her bun secured with several pins—waiting outside her hotel for a taxi. By 9:45, she was at the venue in Tribeca. Jenny wasn’t there yet, of course. The main dining area was closed off, as it was still early, but the lobby door was open and she let herself in. She didn’t see anyone. Nothing about the restaurant made it apparent that a major event…

"At 12pm, they were going to feed us. It was a special lunch, they said. They had us queue up to get our food and it felt good to be allowed out of our cages." -- Helena Baptiste, "The Sin-Eaters"

Today was a special day the men said. “Be on your best behavior.” The implied “or else” hanging in the air like a plague of biting flies. They always said this when bad news was coming, when pink slips fluttered down like empty peanut shells. They had tidied the place up, hosed everything down. It wasn’t quite sparkling, but the place smelled of cleaning spray and freshness instead of restless…

How Sanitary Pads Are Made from Emilie Pichot on Vimeo.

      Emilie Pichot, a white queer woman in Baltimore, MD, scratches itches to dismantle power structures, poking holes until they leak. She also enjoys library work, horror film, baking, and collaging.

    (Front page image via Emilie Pichot)

"Maybe in those last few scenes of your life before it all goes dark, lying on your bed in a tiny LA apartment, you wonder, if only I’d been born somewhere else. London, like Karloff, or America, like everybody else." -- Kate LaDew, "Bela"

You don’t have an accent in Hungary, just dark hair and cruel eyes and a willingness to play what ever part you’re given.

Then World War I comes and you play that part too, handed a Wound Medal for your trouble, a red stripe for each, a dull gray zinc circle you abandon after pledging your allegiance to the United States and five different women, abandoning all but the last. She was a girl half…

“And which one makes you feel the most alone?” “The mother?” The administrator sighed. -- Amelia Morand, "Eye Exam"

I pushed my forehead down until it fully depressed the wide button, until the bridge of my nose fit snug against the plastic indent and my eyes peered down at the rows of symbols that had been clicked into place.

“Read the first line,” the administrator prompted as she swiveled back and forth in her seat, clicked the top her Bank of Los Alamos pen.

“F… Square… L… G… Seven… …. Alabama.”

“Good,”…