Punk Monk Press/Magazine

could just have easily been named the door to everywhere, but as children, we tended to think what could be contained, looked out from, was the point of reference. Our home was anything but safe. Loaded guns lurked in nightstand drawers, pornography was coffee table art, and we were too young to be left alone as often as we were. To pass the time, we wrote the names of rock bands on our school folders, copied from my father’s album collection. We took turns lying on our stomachs in front of the milk crate where the records were alphabetized, our heads cocked to read the vertical lettering. If we felt brave, we would slide the cover out, never removing it all the way because we were certain our father would know. Even if we could put it back in the correct slot, some dust-smear or fingerprint would reveal our disobedience, the crossing of the imaginary line between permitted and forbidden, a line that shifted or vanished entirely at t...

I used to take advantage of each second – popping truck stop Yellow Jackets just to stay conscious for another hour. And, though I shook with lethal doses of legal uppers my mind functioned with a clarity that I can’t even begin to remember. Even in hour 72 when the micro-naps and hallucinated confidants blurred across my perfect vision, I was more connected to life than I’ll ever be again. Today’s life is dull, a reflection of something so insignificant that I wonder why I even miss it.   --Jessica Gleason

“I suppose you heard what happened to Johnny 2 drinks?” “No, I’ve just got back from Wales, what’s happened?” “He’s up at City Royal in intensive care, a right mess. Stevie and Mickey caught him in the kitchen steaming open the mail with a boiling kettle on Giro Day. They kicked seven different shades of shit out of him, he’s in a coma still, gives me the horrors just thinking of it!” “That doesn’t make any sense, why not just steal the mail and open it elsewhere, like in the park across the road or somewhere and then just bin the envelopes afterwards?” “Well, him and Karen from room 6 had a barney again and it was her post that he was caught steaming open. He’s been ranting drunkenly about her seeing another man for a couple of nights before all this happened. He tried to tell Stevie and Mickey that he was just looking for evidence as they were beating him but of course they were both having none of it at all!” “But that’s crazy, I think that he’s probably telling the truth!” “I know ...

You've got your pretty punk girlfriend. I've sold out. I'm everything that you used to be. I'm everything that I used to hate.   Idiots guzzling beer, what's the message? There is no message, man. Rape your country. Kill your Indian. Buy a new car.   You've got your pretty punk girlfriend. I've sold out. Your band is the hit at The Whiskey A Go Go.     --Mikel K