Punk Monk Press/Magazine

club loving queer love is in the club not in lips or not there touches but in the hazy smoke and sequins shining signals like lighthouses I’m here I’m here I’m here existing free past eight and under 20, drinking life from glitter food trucks and neon nine inch heels, the love in the air sinks deep in the pockets of too-loose pants and too-soon tender, like happy hour in the bass line of a song that is supposed to have more words, yelling and not being heard but not caring, the man with the cigarette in the brick-walled corner like staring like watching the youth but no blame is there, even boredom, even the astro-turf asks less questions than this, and when all answers are found, the brightest smile comes from the twink in tiny shorts on that stage where we found first life in the night. --T.L. Riddle

Monotone Noa likes to refer to people by their most prominent features, the ones she knows they’ll be insecure about. Never their names. It’s  Bald Spot , or  Teeth , or  Eyebrow s. It’s from high school, according to her. From being called  Flat Chest  for years herself. She’s really good at it. Finds the exact thing a person hates about themselves.  When we fight and she calls me Monotone for the first time, I ask her about it.  What the hell is wrong with you?  Why do you do that? Don’t deflect , she fires back.  You’re manipulating the conversation . She’s right, because the fight was about how I left her alone in the club bathroom when we went out and she had to throw up and because I didn’t hold her hair back she got vomit all over her hair and a friend joked about how she smelled. On the way back on the train she gave me the silent treatment. Except for the few times she let me hold a water bottle in front of her face so she could...

I Was A Child  The day I got the shitty diagnosis, three letters: IBS, I remember sitting, fidgeting, being told it was because I had anxiety,  because of my longer, lingering  diagnosis of Dyspraxia. I hadn't realised anxiety could permanently fuck your body up something chronic-or that they  would make my future periods  bloody hard.  So I had these diagnoses, and I had anxiety.  (All that aside, I was also getting bullied). And I was a child.  I was eleven.  --Lydia Pearson

He called it a divine appointment and it made sense to me   he told me his story  about the straitjacket and injections and lithium and God.   he told me to never get on meds that mental illness is not real it’s something humans have created to better understand people like us people that express themselves in outrageous ways but that it doesn’t make us any less human or permanently ill from birth till death   he told me  he found his purpose through God he told me to find my light he told me not to let the darkness take me.   We shook hands I almost asked for a hug   He took off his sunglasses and I could see it in his eyes the crazy   Is that what people see when they look into mine? or do they not see what they don’t know? --Alien Baby

Terms and Conditions If you agree to date someone identifying as asexual, you can't just end things because the sex wasn't amazing. I mean, what the fuck did you expect, my guy? --Bethany Cutkomp

If I told you what was in my soul  Would you just laugh at me? Or would you understand? If I told you I want to run away  Would you nod and understand? Or just wonder what I’m running from? Every night  I drive around this town  And a little part of me dies Every day I see hope get a little further  And a little part of me dies  It’s been that way for all my life  Ever since I was just a kid And nobody’d understand  If I said I wanted to run away  They just asked what I was running from  It’s been that way for all these years  And I still want to run away  Every night  I drive around this town  And a little part of me dies Every day I see hope get a little further  And a little part of me dies  --Jason Beam