Punk Monk Press/Magazine

reckless, starved, cut free want me hard? take a ticket i’m salivating for the city, for the streets that run like veins sat next to a trans porn star on the way into midtown and said, girl (girl she said) you better believe i’m giving up the white woman, this is the first new years i’ve been sober in ten she said, if you wanna come back to work, gimme a call and i’ll slap you right up with a coupla sissies taking heart in that in here in her, in the middle of wide open i’m ringing all around, sweltering in fits of heat i want to lie down in the street i want to climb onto you and over you to freedom come the fuck at me, all you lovers --Claire Phelan 

Peter Peter  fire eater  had a  wife  &  wouldn’t  keep her  He kissed  that girl  &  made her  cry  His tongue  could burn  O  when would  she learn  not to  play with  fire? --Valeri Beers 

Late at night, past any teenager's Curfew, My friend Chris tells me that Punks don't have parents. People who were raised right Don't shoot off fireworks at shows, Destroy shopping carts, Weigh their jackets down with studs, Or listen to Minor Threat. The last time I saw my father, He punched me in the face. Super punx. I once heard a comedian say that He did not want to be The kind of dad that inspires art. My dad called my brother Jake a fag Back when he had pink hair, So Jake used it in a song and Stormed out of the auditorium Once he was done screaming along to the guitar.   I can't remember how many times My mother threatened to leave when I was growing up, Or how many times I found myself on the floor under her, Learning just how sorry I was supposed to feel. Open handed blows only – She was the good parent, after all. My childhood taught me that No good came from talking to social workers. W...

My suit was blue, or maybe red with tiny pink polka dots and a string around my neck I couldn’t tie alone. Who can remember such things? I do remember clutching the orange Styrofoam kickboard for dear life, paddling my feet with twice the vigor necessary to move forward in water, nothing like the mermaid I wanted to be. Week four of swimming lessons at the YMCA, my classmates, evil, spoiled doctors’ kids, sat on the pool’s edge, laughing at whatever it is third-graders laugh at: rules, each other, poor girls exerting too much energy to move 12 feet, my failure to graduate from using a floatation device. Water beyond the bath was foreign to me. They all had in-ground pools and parents who could swim, fathers who held them horizontal while they went through the motions until they could survive alone. I could only concentrate all my attention on not going under.     --April Salzano

  i am here & i am now, feigning sobriety as much as i can, gimme a fix or gimme a blow job or gimme gimme gimme CPR, maybe hold my hand and walk with me for a mile or two, maybe smile for half o' second, i don' really know, maybe whisper something in my ear, maybe whisper something in my ear. --Joseph James Cawein

Rent: $265/month. My mother had no other options, her stipend for fourteen years of marriage to a burning bed. We saw nothing but a shitty neighborhood, a rooftop accessible from the bathroom window. At dusk we exited like burglars and smoked her stolen cigarettes, trying on adulthood like a half slip. She saw only freedom, a place where bruises heal.     --April Salzano

I'm so busy only coffee calms me down. Here's my paystub: it's another genome. When I was small I thought I was all. Now older wiser, a microscopic mouth. If reincarnation got commodified I probably could afford only being me. Adhesive is my overtime; I use a flashlight full of numbers. Married 50 years to myself — divorce papers. I have fonts for lunch & symptoms for dinner. My pension is voicemail laryngitis. I'm so busy my dreams drink coffee. --Craig Kurtz 

  Hi, and welcome to the profession Don't expect any recognition And don't expect adequate monetary compensation You - madam or sir - are doing bitches' work Let me clarify Your profession is a gendered space So whether you are cunt blessed Or whether you are cock afflicted You are a cunt In our eyes And you will be treated And paid accordingly We do not value your work If it served any purpose It would be a field populated by us You Along with all the rest of your ilk The teachers The nurses The social workers Are bitches and cunts Whether you are cunt blessed Or whether you are cock afflicted And you will be treated And paid accordingly.   --Alfonso Colasuonno

Afraid of abundance, too long at the bottom. blessed I stood, bright male, brilliance magnified. in the inner city, and yet, shivering in the warm, terrified of cash and neon and the women ... anyone of them could be the one, and there were these horrifying mixed drinks that I could suddenly afford, and the face in the mirror behind the bar ... no longer a child ... I wanted to lie down, lick the floor, make it my home ... I was born blue, but now grown whatever color the strobe light would have me ... not forgetting music, throbbing, throbbing, so heavy on the beat, my heart's dominatrix. --John Grey

it is almost unreal watching them two on one side of the subway seat and two on the other snorting at each other howling so ungraciously and taking photographs on their phones these wild beasts of the american night nearly all of them three-hundred pounds in mini-skirts or corsets their bare asses plastered to sticky seats full of bum jizz and toddler snot sort of human just like you one of them looks like an ogre with yellow flesh and red nostrils she keeps huffing out of her wide nose opening her wide mouth and exposing square brown teeth she’s talking about all of the men who are in love with her they all want this, she says running her thick hands down her dress who are these men? i ask my wife where do men like this exist? the two who aren’t three-hundred pounds are taking photos of each other and spraying whore perfume they keep kissing each other on the cheek making like they’re going to french kiss w...

I wallow in the depravity you encase me in, longing for your temporary emotional fix. My body needs that sensual flood that forces me back into bottomless debts. Your physical consumption inadequately soothes, filling me with rejected numbness as you cover me in a blanket of blindness, desperately trying to erase the tracks degrading me naked. --A.J. Huffman

sometimes my poems about my pain aren’t polished sometimes my pain poems come out very bad but sometimes my poems about pain soar sometimes everything’s arranged just right but it’s fucking strange to distinguish between them b/c no matter what—pain is always pain sometimes i even prefer my very bad pain poems when my pain even fucks up my creative judgment & what i get is a sick knife plunged into a pile of shit --Rob Plath

jerry teaches checkers to the delinquents where i work we ride the same bus home sometimes only we never talk one time he asked out my co-worker wanted to take her for coffee which for some reason offended her delicate sensibilities so much so that she threatened to go to the administration about it that she flashed her ring in my face like a diamond mace and said don’t he know i’m married? as if that mattered to a man so clearly desperate for love and companionship that he was willing to risk his job for black bodega sludge cream and sugar and a pretty face. --John Grochalski

  It is a whole lot easier to back out of driveways than marriages; I don’t know why, but she was mighty pissed when Pat told her he was too young to marry, there were still wild oats to sow.     "WILD OATS, WILD OATS?", she screamed "I’ll show you WILD OATS!"     She came at him with a hammer from the tool box in the garage.     He thought about hitting her but remembered the law.     Instead, he ran away down the street (falling out of his shoes a third of the way down) as she chased him still screeching: "WILD OATS WILD OATS WILD OATS..."     Neighbours stood around on the sidewalk laughing while I sat on the front steps - waiting for dinner or mercy - counting the ants that came out of the hole and made their way toward the faux brass railing. --Ryan Flanagan

In a mad world The sane are the ones Who are truly mad Who wait in line For the latest version Of what to do next Who gather in crowds For a brief glimpse Of who to listen to Who browse magazines To learn the ways To avoid mistakes Who cruise the Internet To seek out others Exactly like them Who go into debt For tickets to shows Where nothing goes wrong Who watch TV While taking notes To keep one step ahead Who believe that dreams Are to always want more No matter the cost --Richard Schnap

Redirecting hurt, creating feedback loops via individual interfaces, Makes for “modern wisdom,” socially awkward questions, recalcitrance. Recording pain for posterity, deconstructing vices, unblocking memories, Causes railing against extended families’ assumptions, institutional truths. Expressively crippled adults, raising children, forge new misunderstandings, Bring about a reluctant habit of answers, establish inelegant verities. Individual concerns, notwithstanding, inhumane acts scar, maim, otherwise injure, Rationalize away no wrong, cover up no neglect or abuse, recover nothing. Past experiences evolve present realisms. Victimhood hangs about orphaned. Trauma invites unsalvageable moments to linger, smoke a few, return for more. --KJ Hannah Greenberg

P antyville All this early out-permanent ecstasy rapid response condoms ß©ÞW everybody climbing over Hadrian’s Wall avoiding commitment, boregasms finger claw ring bits left at the scene atop another smoldering relationship flaccidly held together by denial or fists         Slaughterhouse Lullaby   America had   longer wakeuptime worldview   as if molasses were operating   room anesthesia   held in dank catacombs without   sonic  experimentations roping   submersible barbed wire hanging   trees custom fabricated noose-   wear: weird western vests to go   Bondage therapy by appointment only           --David S. Pointer

Fuck Machine   I am invisible. Until the lights go down and the Jack meets the Coke (over ice, of course) a few times. Then clink! Suddenly he sees me. All shiny and nude (even when I am not). And it is perfect. For an hour or two (on a good/rare night). Then in the morning, he is gone again. Or I am. And does it even matter which one of us disappeared. We are each dissolved back into the reality of our own mundanity. Until further escape is desired/required. And somewhere as the sun goes down again, a telephone sounds its sirened call, that will (no doubt) lead to another inevitable clink!       Happy [Hateful] Anniversary – June 5, 2012   The number 5 resonates from inside its markered circle. A silly sentimental scrawl splayed beneath it to [rein]force a remembrance I now wish I could forget as I sit here shredding any and all evidence of that fateless day.   Riiiii...