Punk Monk Press/Magazine

reckless, starved, cut free want me hard? take a ticket i’m salivating for the city, for the streets that run like veins sat next to a trans porn star on the way into midtown and said, girl (girl she said) you better believe i’m giving up the white woman, this is the first new years i’ve been sober in ten she said, if you wanna come back to work, gimme a call and i’ll slap you right up with a coupla sissies taking heart in that in here in her, in the middle of wide open i’m ringing all around, sweltering in fits of heat i want to lie down in the street i want to climb onto you and over you to freedom come the fuck at me, all you lovers --Claire Phelan 

Peter Peter  fire eater  had a  wife  &  wouldn’t  keep her  He kissed  that girl  &  made her  cry  His tongue  could burn  O  when would  she learn  not to  play with  fire? --Valeri Beers 

Late at night, past any teenager's Curfew, My friend Chris tells me that Punks don't have parents. People who were raised right Don't shoot off fireworks at shows, Destroy shopping carts, Weigh their jackets down with studs, Or listen to Minor Threat. The last time I saw my father, He punched me in the face. Super punx. I once heard a comedian say that He did not want to be The kind of dad that inspires art. My dad called my brother Jake a fag Back when he had pink hair, So Jake used it in a song and Stormed out of the auditorium Once he was done screaming along to the guitar.   I can't remember how many times My mother threatened to leave when I was growing up, Or how many times I found myself on the floor under her, Learning just how sorry I was supposed to feel. Open handed blows only – She was the good parent, after all. My childhood taught me that No good came from talking to social workers. W...

My suit was blue, or maybe red with tiny pink polka dots and a string around my neck I couldn’t tie alone. Who can remember such things? I do remember clutching the orange Styrofoam kickboard for dear life, paddling my feet with twice the vigor necessary to move forward in water, nothing like the mermaid I wanted to be. Week four of swimming lessons at the YMCA, my classmates, evil, spoiled doctors’ kids, sat on the pool’s edge, laughing at whatever it is third-graders laugh at: rules, each other, poor girls exerting too much energy to move 12 feet, my failure to graduate from using a floatation device. Water beyond the bath was foreign to me. They all had in-ground pools and parents who could swim, fathers who held them horizontal while they went through the motions until they could survive alone. I could only concentrate all my attention on not going under.     --April Salzano

  i am here & i am now, feigning sobriety as much as i can, gimme a fix or gimme a blow job or gimme gimme gimme CPR, maybe hold my hand and walk with me for a mile or two, maybe smile for half o' second, i don' really know, maybe whisper something in my ear, maybe whisper something in my ear. --Joseph James Cawein

Rent: $265/month. My mother had no other options, her stipend for fourteen years of marriage to a burning bed. We saw nothing but a shitty neighborhood, a rooftop accessible from the bathroom window. At dusk we exited like burglars and smoked her stolen cigarettes, trying on adulthood like a half slip. She saw only freedom, a place where bruises heal.     --April Salzano

I'm so busy only coffee calms me down. Here's my paystub: it's another genome. When I was small I thought I was all. Now older wiser, a microscopic mouth. If reincarnation got commodified I probably could afford only being me. Adhesive is my overtime; I use a flashlight full of numbers. Married 50 years to myself — divorce papers. I have fonts for lunch & symptoms for dinner. My pension is voicemail laryngitis. I'm so busy my dreams drink coffee. --Craig Kurtz