Here’s another reason to support Apogee Journal: Because it takes up space that would otherwise be occupied by more of the same. Instead, Apogee brings unabashed, scarce, lyrical truth. Never was this more evident than in Issue 3.
Morgan Parker:
Sometimes I don’t shine / and I see, how a mirror / makes me two. Wake up / in stings, black / Radiohead. Black Sylvia / Plath. On those days I am / only an idea. A broom / sweeping. A constellation.
Rich Benjamin:
Racial issues can differ in the center of the country, but I don’t think it’s better on the coast. It’s a different set of racial issues, and a different set of ‘race phobias’ … there can be a level of self-satisfaction on the coasts that says they’ve handled their race related problems.
Christopher Soto:
lorde know(s) that cis-hets don’t like me / baldwin know(s), how white homos exoticize me / i hope that heaven got a gay ghetto / where my qpoc family don’t feel shame / don’t feel too brown or black / or femme and phat
Kaitlyn Greenidge:
Her mother fights for good things but can’t hold onto money. She never exactly told Lisa they were poor, and would say she isn’t the type of woman who believes in labels, that to identify as poor means surrendering to a false paradigm. Lisa put it together. “You’re a smart girl,” her mom said. “Don’t let anyone tell you that’s bad.”
Rebecca Sumner Burgos on José Esteban Muñoz:
According to José, I was and always will be la peor de todas, un sinvergüenza. He was right. I am. And he made me feel proud of it, my excessiveness, my misguided rebellion, my delusional sense of self. Being bad or deviant in a world that is so wrong is like being right. It is the proper response. It is a refusal and sacrifice worth making.
Issue 3 was a reminder, as Managing Editor Zinzi Clemmons explained, that it’s a falsehood and erasure to say that the literary world has two centers: the academic and publishing industries. The injustices of our world that permeate everything in between are the motivation and connective tissue for many of us.
Make a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Fractured Atlas, using this link: https://www.fracturedatlas.org/site/fiscal/profile?id=9761#giving_levels.”
Purchase issue 03 here (“Buy now”): https://www.apogeejournal.org/issues/
