Punk Monk Press/Magazine

Elegy for a Frightened Rabbit #1 I didn’t listen to your music until after you died /  something about your voice // too scottish // no // too  honest // so honest / I was afraid / because I’ve got a bridge too //  every time I cross it / I stumble back years // I fell in love / got addicted  to the feeling /of being their fix // sometimes / I still want / to step out / into the sea / fully clothed /   float away / / --Nico Penaaranda

A good indicator of health   There’s a price for preparing breakfast— “Mommy makes it best!”— pleading for my children to wake Daddy, can’t let them see my fear as I  lie  paralyzed on the couch, thankful  to retain the power  of speech.   I no longer wash my own hair and body, my once-a-week shower  leaves me collapsed in bed,  with leaden limbs.   My entire body quivers with the effort of the trek  from bathroom to couch, as I grip my rollator like a marathoner  clinging to support as they stumble across the finish line.   But, good news! The doctor declares me healthy,  for every 28 days I bleed. --Kristin Houlihan 

Sometimes We Outgrow Things   My husband collects things that are brown. Sepia, mahogany, burnt sienna, cocoa, taupe – all the browns you can think of, in nature and in Pantone. It’s a grounding color. He needs grounding.  He’s easy to buy presents for, though – anything brown. He was overjoyed when I presented him with the copper replica of a motorbike he had when he was young. He displays it with a brown-uniformed action figure of some alien or something, I don’t know what it is. The action figure is barely taller than the wheels on the copper motorbike.  “Perfect proportions,” my husband says, beaming. “That’s how small I felt compared to my motorbike. God the power in that thing!”  I’ve seen pictures, it was a 200cc is all. But I don’t want to question his bravery. “Chicks dig motorbikes,” he tells me. “My teacher told me in fifth grade.” I picture him, putting along the street, the back of his seat empty, him in goggles and an aviator’s abandoned helmet, cruisin...

SONGS ON A MARCH FOR WOMEN’S LIVES     (a frontline report in the form of a poem) My baby don’t mess around, Code Pink Girls know what happens when you mess around in Washington D.C. on April 24, 2004,  don’t mess with us now. a   One, two, three, four! Code Pink Girls have a routine; four to a line, 4 – 8 -- 12 –16, palms up, palms down,  my baby don’t mess around until the right-to-lifers break the line and then the dance really begins, Code Pink Girls shimmy up, join arms around the outraged, red faced, bloody fetus  placard waving young man, belly to belly with the rage, gently  dance him back behind police lines. Hey Ya!   Here we are  – “Post Menopausal Women Nostalgic For Choice” marching next to aqua t-shirted “Not In My Lifetime!” twenty-two year olds.    We’re all here and we won’t go back We won’t go back It’s too late to turn back now I believe I believe  I’m falling in love but it’s still my body. Hey ya! ...

Edges My body’s edges have melted like wax. First, my skin lay soft and plump over my bones. Then, as I grew older, the shape of tibia, fibia, femor, patella, spinal column, ribcage, scapula, clavicle pressed against the tight skin like rocks pushing through the dirt. Later, that cover was stuffed like the fat cushions on my grandmother’s bed, curved and firm, sex spread across my chest, my hips, my arse, my taut round calves, until my belly bulged like a medicine ball then emptied and shrank back, loose as a deflated balloon. Food became my greatest joy. My flesh was a plastic bag pushed smooth from the inside by the pressure of dimpled fat. I ate as if food was life itself, ravenous, insatiable. As I grew larger, I became unseen. No one noticed the gorgeous mounds and hidden crevices, the golden hairs glittering along the horizons of my body. No one valued my manatee hips, my bolster breasts resting on a mattress midriff. And, now, my body’s edges have melted like wax, grown into lay...

Sisters from the hood You and me Playing in the rain Building castles with sand Playing suwe Stealing pennies to buy eyin alangba (egg shaped sweets) and bubble gum Running for miles On our scrawny legs Eating together from the same plate and disagreeing with the division of the lone piece of meat alloted us Fighting and making up...over and over again So many years ago I heard you came back to the hood And made haste to visit you, my sister from the hood How shocked I was When you snubbed me What can fa? (What could cause this?) Is it because you return with an acquired accent? Is it because you return, coldly polished and strangely distant? Is it because you now feel superior to me because, I never left? My sister from the hood returns But not to me. --Solape Adetutu

Will I still love me? They said I talked too much So I said less Said I wore a whole lot So I exposed more Said I lacked a social life So parties became my life Said I loved too much So I began loving less With every complaint they levied I made a change Because I craved their attention Because I longed for love But the person in the mirror became unrecognizable With the more recognition I got And I began to forget What I really loved And as I stared into blank space I thought about it Because while I got their love I had forgotten how it felt To look at myself and smile And all I could think is Now that they all love me Do I still love myself? -Hannah Njoki 

I think to myself,    “I know how to make my eyes sad, brown, and heartfelt, with longing.”    I look in the mirror. I think about what got me here, in the bathroom of a grand ballroom in a camp made by some rich Orthodox Rabbi from Lakewood, NJ. How did I get inside the bathroom and away from the Passover Seder? Why am I celebrating Passover with a bunch of acquaintances of mine from some religious Jewish camp I attended over the summer? Right.    Drunk, sad, and lonely, I sat at Passover Seder in a camp in upstate New York and I did not belong there -- not at the Passover seder, not here in this world. Instead of the Hebrews who found their faith, their G-D, and home, I was like Joseph, who was thrown into a well by his brothers and sold off into slavery. Oh, how much I wanted to leave and run away from everything!    Never did I think I was the one who abandoned anyone. But, I did! I never ran away. I just listened to the girl in the mirror and...

The Day Movers Took Linda’s Things Laniar D. Romon   I was screaming though my mouth was closed. I was crying though my eyes were dry. That’s because they were taking away Mom’s stuff, and Ray, her husband but not  my  father, just said something about her being crazy because she’d bought a gas stove ten years ago, but they only had electric. I watched them put it on a dolly and wondered why I hadn’t ever seen it before. “Jace?” I turned; it was Ray. The look in his eyes told me something he didn’t want me to know. Screaming again, lips sealed. “I didn’t mean that the way it came out,” he said. “I loved your mother very much.” He was watching my every move so I nodded just so I could get away. But he kept talking, cutting me off at the door. “How are you holding up?” he asked. “Fine,” I lied. “Yeah,” he said, softly. “You miss her as much as I do.” Asshole! “I do,” I swallowed the scream again. The last thing I needed was to piss him off because I had nowhere else to go, ...

I want to be a whore   I don’t want to be a virgin. I want to be a whore. I’m sick of waiting like Penelope. But unlike Penelope I don’t even have suitors. I wouldn’t unstitch I would fuck. I refuse to release my soul from my body like a philosophical man. I don’t want to be sequestered in the measured boredom of weaving or the waves of the ocean. I’m sick of misrecognition. I want to recognise him/her/they. I want to recognise my love. I want to recognise my lust. I want to recognise my desire. I don’t want to wait twenty years. I don’t want a fearful marriage. --Gabrielle Everall

 --Alexey Deyneko 

  --Tammy Higgins

They are taking down the halogens     it's not about the line   being beautiful, or true.    sometimes it's just writing down the weather    in cities we only know    from poems and descriptions   by friends. what else is tel aviv   or buenos aires? it's what ray   carver told me. and gui comes from   sao paolo – people there   are good photographers. new york   is a place where the best    weekends happened in my life – bags of trash   on the street bursting open   like fruit in an orchard and two girls   in three nights – I still think of them sometimes.   they are taking down the halogens   in dublin over summer – the lights shine LED-   white suddenly, rather than orange   and salt. rainy pavements, one could say,    have lost a certain style.    what do poets care though – I can write   old light in poetry. as if words   were a refurb...

  The Gilgo Beach murderer was arrested on July 14, 2023.  Bodies of victims were found 43 miles from the Stony Brook college campus.   Forty-three miles from the forest we walk alone in the dark. From the bonfires we smoke joints  and read Anne Sexton poems.  From the stream we dance in wet nightgowns, and French kiss to see how it feels.  Police say he seduces girls  with his charm and his wit, drugs them and drags them to his car.     What would we do knowing he lurks in the woods,  watching every glance,  every breath, every touch. Would we hide amongst the rocks, run deep into the trees. Cover  our shoulders, and our breasts,  burrow under leaves. Would we attack  with our fists, and our keys. Destroy him, before he destroys us. --M.R. Mandell 

The Worst Thing To Say What was the worst thing she could say Her preschool brain could not keep The flood of her emotions at bay If she wished everyone would go To the sky out loud except for her Great grandmother who more likely Would go there in real time would Her anger still stay or fail to Go away because she incited strong  Feelings in certain listeners She longing for understanding adults To pave the way teaching her to Channel all that baby fury with Nowhere to go by wrapping her In a full body hug acknowledging Her emotion and teaching her a Better way to let it all out --Susan Pollet

God Helps Those Who Edit      A couple of months ago I began collecting my Union Pension Retirement Benefits.   Funny thing is I don’t belong to a union.     I’ll tell you what aroma therapy is, sitting on my balcony on a late autumn afternoon next to a Sensemia plant in full bloom.  With pipe in hand, I think of all the things I could do if I wasn’t so stoned.     So much energy goes into making a poem I’m surprised sometimes they don’t explode.  --Alan Simmons 

  --Mia Amore Del Bando

A Little Glory on the Page, Please Written upon seeing an ad for a workshop that promises the student will leave with “ten perfect poems”   I need poems that fish pants out  of the clean but never-folded pile, poems  so creased they can’t be ironed smooth.  Read me poems that burst into tears  at the breakfast table, sob into their cereal,  dribble milk onto their wrinkled, untucked  shirts. Hand me crinkled pages, poems that struggle w/ the alphabet, always put “O”  after “P,” think “Q” shouldn’t need “U” all  the goddamn time. Give me upside down  poems, stanzas hard-shelled & towering  like broken vending machines, poems  w/ unshakable attitude & charm so thick  they might nosedive into arrogance.  I like a poem I’ve got to keep an eye on,    one w/ lines that hit like liquid acid  or rails of white powder. Fuck placebo  poems. Tease me w/ poems that leave  lingering stains: spills ...