Punk Monk Press/Magazine

my pink petals darkened brown  I thought for the sin of my unwashed hands.  Barbie doll romantic reenactments  always terminated in taboo  Georgia O’Keefe finger painting. When I first saw a lady slipper in the woods,  I knew it had nothing to do with shoes,  unless you’re talking pumps, just for the sound of it.  it has a labellum,  just say it slow and sultry like with your honey sweet lips. And of course bellum is Latin for war. A phalaenopsis orchid: phalaina from Greek, meaning moth but I see a soft phallus in the word, spelled more prettily. I mean it has a tiny nub called a column, and therefore columns in common flowers are  called the stigma,  and that’s what I certainly had, with my boy-bruised petals  back in a spring equinox that was never equal.  Maybe Aristotle knew what he was talking about when he used opsis to mean final tragedy, because everyone knows mot...

As far as I’m concerned, I told you I was gay When I bit Barbie’s head off   As far as I’m concerned, I told you I was gay when I stole Jim’s racecar pajamas And wore them underneath   As far as I’m concerned The baseball cap I wore from ages five to fourteen Was one of the many ways I told you I was gay   When I refused to wear the top To my bathing suits I was telling you   When I insisted on swigging soda From the bottle So it looked more like your beer I was clearly telling you I was gay   When I wore a sweatshirt Over 2 t-shirts With a mustard stain on each of them I was telling you   When you teased me about wanting To marry Joe Namath And I said, no, I wanted to be Joe Namath I was telling you When I asked you to call me “Sport” instead of “Sweetheart’” I was telling you When I wiped my mouth on my sleeve Shoved my hands in my pockets Practiced spitting, grunting And pe...

Wheeled out in prime time, dusted off, make-up girls powdering her up from crusted toe to nose, Lot’s wife dug from the desert, placed on a sound stage under lights to amuse the martini boys and girls and sell a few six packs—here the aftermath of a sand god speaks to the masses in a tongue they do not hear. Could be Oprah or Maury, Johnny or Dave—no matter, any full set of teeth and lacquered hairdo will suffice. So Lot’s dear wife sits as a caked mannequin, camel smile burnt on for millennia, limestone ears buzzed by an audience’s tinnitus, listens to the micro-phoned questions coming from a crowd eager to consume a rock woman’s answers. Her thoughts ooze out like moss on stone. They would fish-hook them from her frozen tongue. Her gaze of ages from welded eyes made cracked crystal by Sodom’s burned turrets. This the lack of obedience from the spirits’ warning of not to gaze on the white incarnation, solid fog made of ...

Starchy corn Plowing Summer heat Shit planting flies With a windmill in the background Possessions Enough money raised Timber, low beams Chunky leather sofas Sticks to our bare legs As the furniture moves                 past our noses A washing machine and wooden chairs            for the dining table Upstairs there are cries and groans Beds being assembled Trapping fingers Breaking nails and Bruising knees On the hardwood floor Rugs We need some rugs for our new home too. --Katie Lewington

As a girl I was told that it was better to sit in silence—because I was a girl, so I sat in silence as a girl.           Not to be denied, I knew my creative power, made a box of words that in curvaceous moments pulled muscle cars from the past that drove me along in perfect seeing silence. Those who made me mute may as well have written an obituary of rocks.   They did not understand that my multi-colored         leggings gave tread to my wanderings where I would someday embrace the PTSD, love the past ripped pains.           In my hush I saw that most men would have an Ithaca-moment, that metallic lingerie was nothing but a subversion of surfaces withholding encrypted love,         that their glass gears, confectioned cogs prevented them from ever knowing an intimate, perfect tension, from...