Punk Monk Press/Magazine

The early morning sun hugged me in its warm embrace, almost too sensual but an indifferent breeze lightened the caress. A fluttering snatched my attention. A compact, black form swooped on the air currents into my view auguring a vision in a smoldering pile of entrails. It twirled, fluttered high above my head, skimmed sideways, then swooped down like a paper-plane fighter jet freed of its destructive urges. Its feathery lightness entangled me in its presence so I watched and waited and willed it closer. A dew-sparkled bit of soil was its landing pad. Presumption of its possession coerced it into flight. It did cartwheels, barrel rolls, high jumps, And then it dared to swoop in tantalizingly closer to me, this arrogant, mesmerized human, it mocked me. It fluttered its wigs in tight arcs, dancing a tranquil minuet only Lilliputian steps away, touchable, yet unapproachable. The wings dotted by yellow splotches along its edges twitched expectantly as if waiting f...

Ugh. The mall. Even thinking the word gives me a bad taste in my mouth. I used to be naïve to the true reality of this place. I used to think it would be a great place to take your kids on a Saturday when it’s too cold to play outside. Maybe buy them one of those huge lollipops that look like optical illusions. Walk around, look at stuff, buy them presents, laugh. I see lots of young moms doing that with their kids these days. There are at least three happy families in my peripheral vision right now. Are they happy, though? If every person has a dark side, every family must have a dark room to fill all their secrets with, bouncing around in pitch black, creating head-on collisions, spawning new lies to cover up old ones. An endless cycle. What’s that perky new mom hiding? Every smile has a fracture. The shrill presence of a group of preteens snaps me back to the moment. Ugh. Teenagers. The problem with kids is that they grow up. Nobody stays four forever. Well, nobody should, a...

The evening was so cute when the clouds came out wrinkled against the pink.             Silence was the channel.       Pink is the color of my brain imagining how bad things are. Hidden in you like a pearl (some thing)—there is blood in my heart and the blood is wet—your kisses taste gamey like old food in the oiled sea of your mouth, its calm cave—here’s the kneecap of the world: quick, take this baseball bat and go for it, fuck it up bad—a year and a half ago I wanted to beat the shit out of a stranger so much for some reason, just a guy on the street, a cholo giving me the stinkeye, a drunk’s dumb bravado, destroy the windshield of a car honking at me as I crossed an intersection—heaven’s curd—how few thoughts does it take to stop someone from existing?—I'm waiting for the volcano's flood to rewind itself, to undo what it did—feeling the base of your bare ribs trying to sense their vasculature—I don...

With all my tad pole mite I wish I could reverse insemination. I have been pregnant more than not. My nipples like glass in your mouth My insides hungry gravel. Hard sharp stones no love, only desire I just ate but I want more. I stripped in a dark damp motel with beach sand feet was torn apart by mouths entered and I will do it again. There are lips and arms I crave but they don’t sleep beside me. His forlorn biceps wait for me. I roll over give him my back, check my phone. Wish he’d snore so I could masturbate. My hormones are raging cannibals. I wish my backyard could prove so fertile. I need a new season the Christmas tree lays dead on the sidewalk I’m tired of cold feet holding my heat in so he’ll understand I’m leaving. The garbage men drop trash everywhere, and the street sweeper skirts around it. This is a statement on class how they feel about us in our buckets and scrapers spidery beats over speed bumps. smog hugs these flat lands fo...

her mouth was enigmatic and unmoving her lips would part only to take in air or to clench her pencil between her teeth pale skin, sandra low torso, sandra black shoulder-length hair, sandra we were aware of each other she believed the female body was much like the ocean with curious things in curious places secrets under the sand or in the kelp or in the tide pools waiting to be uncovered low torso, sandra we began writing each other after school let out for the summer sending letters through the post she even sent a picture a black & white photo a close up her head adjusted slightly to the right gazing at something outside of her 6X4 world black shoulder-length hair, sandra she would write about how she wanted to study celtic mythology on some study abroad program how her room was always a mess i remember how she lost interest in me repeating past conversations responding out of courtesy the letters stopped shortly after pale skin, sandra ...

Before First Coffee Before first coffee, and she's nattering. Tussle-haired and chock full of places we'll go, in the afternoon, but I missed the dreamless slumber of Odysseus in the cave, I tossed. I was bitten by the alarm you set to snooze, princess, and there's no sullen drape to pull between our tangled corpses. I'll tape a grapefruit to hold your loose lips prone. Bind your morning wrists with Fruit Loops so you're wide-eyed and waiting once my coffee has brewed, for this universe is 90% dark matter and I am not always sunshine at the crack of the dawn. The Smell of Chlorine on Her Skin I wait in the gallery, watch her stroke undulate like a caterpillar’s arching back, like a greyhound pelting for the lure of the hare. Fold my hands in my coat, blink at the gnash of chemical teeth in the air indoors. Here, the echo of a scream is a metal pea whistle sharpened to a spike but under the water it is blue, blue as an air-strike summer sky, and quiet. E...

thin cuts of spring in my fingertips spring as my oldest and longest lover spring at my door spring yellowing the air with pollen spring, i owe you an apology for weeping in the black ice nights of december for dancing bare breast on tables with older men hooting and steaming below all in the rising heats of summer i am sorry for fall and its militia of crisp leaves creeping up on me like a final goodbye pushing me down flat on my stomach their jabberwocky eyes thick with amusement and hunger folding thick like an afghan in their mouths but spring, my baby boy you'll come quick to put me on your saddle and we'll ride off, fading from existence, blurring at the edges. --Tuesday Something

I sink into the bed, lying straight on my back, my arms resting on each side of my body. It feels like I'm being submerged into deep ocean water-- but it's just me losing trace of my own thoughts. It feels like drowning. The icy waters of the North, they are deceivingly blue but once you're under, there's only pitch-black. In a dream you don't feel your lungs filling up with water, you don't feel your breath being snatched away and you certainly don't feel the cold. You just sink into this bottomless hole. I had my arms wrapped around my sister, her heart was pounding, sending sonar signals across the underwater bank. No one came for us. I had seaweed tangled around my intestines and worms crawling out my eye sockets, but I was still holding your hand. You were perfectly preserved at first glance, but that's why we were blessed with skin. It's just a defense mechanism-- underneath you were rotting. Everything that made us human had turned liquid in t...

Doug Your lips are gum drops in my mouth. You don't know I'm watching you.                                                      Seek your face through visions of a poet's eyeglasses, Legs collapse into train tracks                                                     Pieces of you sketched on wide-ruled lines of notebook paper. Reach past a glass of watered down strawberry cola, Past a plate of chicken bones, to the telephone dialing your number. ...

1. i have dreams of killers who slice people with ease, as if they were meat. as if their eyes were your eyes but the shape of something sharp. i wake up. i sleep. it continues. this is the movie with multiple endings but they all contain me standing on a empty highway near a desert with my insides in my hands. 2. i will not overthink this. you are autumn when the leaves begin to crunch. you are the smell of burnt damp air. i am not the pieces of furniture in your house. i am not the emoticon at the end of the message. i am the ring left on the table that you can't get rid of. i am the error response. the leaves crunch, my palms under your feet. 3. the medicine is in short supply. so are poems. so are coherent thoughts. inhale inhale. swoosh. sound effects sountracking downhill motions. the human sled. 4. this is an attack. i meant to trip. i meant to tell you that i love this i promise. i meant to be this way i promise. scraping up the pieces, like i am roadkill for breakfast....

I'm soaked in whiskey desperate for nothing. I wiggle my tongue and dirty fingers at the void so cheap in its grim reaper costume. I do not trust that robe. Here I am exposed so sweet in my compliance a kind of pastry all sugary ooze. It's the gobble I want to feel the empty I welcome the marrow deep silence unbroken by stars. I'm another woman flushed rosy with this sacrifice. I'm soaked in whiskey desperate for nothing. You can keep those flowers. --Misti Rainwater-Lites

I can't masturbate with my downstairs neighbors fighting and it's all I want to do once you've got your mind set on it, ya know... but "Get the fuck out of my house" isn't much of a serenade to the senses it's got one dog barking & the other one shaking doors slamming curses crossing is this what love leads to? I wait for it to get quiet for long enough at a time are they done yet? can I just open up a little by myself? just be half naked home alone... and I hear now another "Fuck you!" and I know this must be why I choose just to fuck myself --T ommy Anthony

the karma wolf is at my door, waiting to sterilize me. fix me, rip out my female bits, teach my insides a lesson. there will be no legacy for me, it all dies now on the feral fangs of lustful fate. eviscerated, a science project. my anatomy leaking onto cold tile, i hold the severed space between my legs and cling to identity while he howls only a few steps behind, the messenger of my actions, exercising the punishment of self. mother, it says from bloody pile of spilled ova, mother i am born to show you how to die. --Emily Smith-Miller