Punk Monk Press/Magazine

Television glow battling bedroom darkness Paying little attention Straining eyes No will to move and put the light on Agonising thoughts on repeat in my head What did they get up to? Where does this leave me? Where does this leave us? Last night was painful and humiliating Helplessly watching the side show unfold; an unwilling spectator A scenario devoid of understanding and definition Limbo I feel like calling it quits Queasy feeling An uneasy feeling Immeasurable want to punch a hole through the wall selfish, and jealous I can't apologise I'm all too human All too real and I feel like calling it quits     --Simon L. Read

  as north korean rockets sail as egypt burns     as guns of ignorance strangle the drought of american landscapes     just as old ice melts into the overwhelmed ocean flooding other land     and it’s sixty degrees one day and it’s twelve degrees on the next     he sits there shouting into his cell phone about how he has pink eye     how his wife his pink eye     how his daughter had pink eye     and how his son is sure to get pink eye     he sits there disease riddled and out in the open     coughing all over us     eating a slice of pizza picking his nose and scratching his balls     wiping his hands on everything     king of the world     king of his own little fucking world.       --John Grochalski

After you stormed off last night, with the bells on the front door still ringing like they could be heard, I went off to our bedroom and checked our joint email account. I don’t know where you went, or are. Don’t know if you will come back. That was one hell of a bloody row we threw, right there in the kitchen. But we got a few emails that say differently. The situation in the Middle East emailed us and said they watched our blowup live, and that our shouting and picking at each other’s soft spots came off as stale, weak,  phoned-in , even. The leaked photographs of the naked and pregnant twentysomething celebrity found our camera angles too jittery, the view of our  dust-up  claustrophobic. The shoving match at the Lakers game found our tears unconvincing. Please come back so we can fight again, one more time in our kitchen; the glass has been swept up; the blood is dry on the dials of the daiquiri maker; I know we ca

The House at the End of the Street my nose and throat burn from snorting bourbon lines laid out in long puddles across the cutting board I’m at the house at the end of this New England street, the punk rocker kids are nibbling on their own waste and vomit, washing it down with Pabst Blue Ribbon the debut of a new band is upon us in the living room, the lead singer smashes bottles against the ketchup streaked walls and screams into the microphone unintelligible obscenities and manifestos I’m not a punk but a sweater clad preppy taking in this scene writing mental notes, a sort of twisted anthropological study of the nation’s youth tucked away in suburban caverns but I forget it all as I slam my drunken skull into a nearby kid’s Mohawk head and blood drips down my nose and I’ll go back to this house on the weekends off from my cookie-cutter gig slinging pharmaceuticals to my wife’s protests; because it’s too much fun not to burn away in the mid

No, but it can come close. The beta fish we had for two years watched me from his bowl with more genuine interest than my husband. The first time I told a man I loved him I had already imagined one I might love more. Love can be like loading and running the dishwasher, like the humming at the end, the signal for washed clean. But I have opened the door with my eyes closed, just to feel the steam on my skin.   To feel something burn. --Joan Prusky Glass