Punk Monk Press/Magazine

  --Matthew Bullen

  i like to say i’m not a poet and i still don’t think i am but it’s not because i don’t like poetry (which i still mostly don’t) but more likely because i’m afraid my words won’t be as good as they are when i write other things because when you write poetry every single word matters but when you write a story or a letter you’re able to think softer and hide behind a scene or a fake character that you say isn’t yourself but usually it is and you think the reader doesn’t know that so it’s less scary than writing ambiguous poetry i get some of my best ideas when i’m high and i can never write when i’m high because i can’t articulate the idea as well when i’m high but i know it’s still going to be one of my best because i’m high and, sidenote, i hate that people use the word ‘high’ in reference to all drugs because when i say i’m high i only ever mean pot but when i read certain stories there are characters who are also high but they did hard, scary, addictive drugs that i would neve...

This Skin Suit Anchored in this skin, rooted firmly to the profile in my side mirror, wrapped in these blemishes and scars. They stare at me, a proverbial "forget me not", willing me to remember each cut and scrape, each stumble and fall, until I've looked too long and the shapes become meaningless again. -- Jessica Gleason

This was what it looked like.  Eve had known grief. She knew loss, a hollowness in her chest. She was well-acquainted with despair. This was something else. This was what would kill her in the end. Not bullet holes, or knife wounds, or even the rope.  This was the fatal blow: her lover's blood mingling like paint with the water above her.  She sank below as Villanelle's body floated above. She looked almost like a painting, an ethereal image, the light from the boat illuminating her. The picture of an angel spreading out her wings.  She remembered the first kiss on the bus. Fighting. Chasing. Catching. How her hands had stroked her hair, how Villanelle preferred her hair down instead of up. The cat and mouse game finally played out where they realised they didn't want to keep playing predator and prey. They wanted more.  Then driving in the caravan they stole, the intense kiss in the road that Eve felt all the way down to her toes. Heat and lust swirling like he...

Conception     I started late and traveled alone keeping the stranger’s sperm  warm against my thigh— the donor thawed by my doctor that I drove to the inseminator’s clinic.   You need help with fertility when you go it on your own, no second set of eyes  on the ovulation timer kit, nobody to cry with when the  pregnancy tests stay negative,   no one else’s dreams crash when the body miscarries.   But what hand hold could prepare anyone  for the miracle, the early rapid shadow flutter of a heart beating just beside my own? -- Irena Praitis  

    (The Audacious Art Sunflower Series will be an ongoing art feature to express solidarity with the Ukraine. Submit your sunflowers via the usual guidelines!) - Serena Piccoli