Punk Monk Press/Magazine

I: Sleep Sleeping on the couch, again and again and again, over and over 'til the end of eternity, or at least until all the sheep have been accounted for, and Mr. Sandman has hung up his cap and gown. I'll be there: The renegade insomniac backpack warrior, stars as my map and streetlights like inkblots spilling across canvas; Jackson Pollock ain't got shit on urban hellscapes. From sweaty leather upholstery in Arizona to a fold-out futon in New Jersey, every couch holds a history. I've been there listening at 3 A.M. (the witches' hour): Whispers of a story in every stain and echoes of a memory in every rusty creak  of well-worn springs. Inhale deep: The dust and dander, smoke and mold. Light breeze from the window. This couch has lived. Exhale and let go. You've been there before, You'll be there again. There's nothing but time from here 'til eternity.  II: Dream Back in the beginning there were nights where I would sleep on the couch for the fun of

A Biter, a Fighter, & a Fox (or, Why Vita Left L.A.) by Vita Tate   i.  2009 and sixteen-year-old Vita poses too-cool-for-school against a kitchen counter of a trashed Laurel Canyon cottage rented by three twenty-something wannabe actors. The men are throwing yet another young Hollywood party to seduce underage models with trust funds and belly button rings, hoping that the girls’ll convince their producer daddies to put the guys on TV. Since Vita is absolutely no one, she shows up to drink their booze and smoke their cigarettes and bolt when the men get too stoned to follow. For months they’ve been playing cat-and-mouse in a game where there’s no mice, only predators, just ’cause she’s homeschooled and bored and thrives on the rush of unrealized desire.   Shot after shot after shot and the alcohol’s getting to her lil baby brain so Vita pours tequila number four on their sneakers while they blabber about some big-budget blah blah blah. Dax is led away by a prettier younger blonde

Untitled  It was another bloodless revolution  today at Starbucks. I myself spoke  for twenty-three minutes straight  and at the end no one knew what I'd said.  As Q-Tip pointed out somewhere in the canon,  that is some heartfelt shit here.  Moment  I was in the ER with my little sister worried and wondering just how selfish it would be if I got up and walked to the bathroom to pee and get a drink from the faucet— all of the fountains were still shut down— and then I wondered how selfish it would be to read my Dean Koontz and as all this appeared in my mind I wondered how selfish it is to compose a poem in your head when your sister’s in the ER and then my revery was broken when my sister interrupted the silence and said, “This is how I should start my memoir. You know, In Media Res.”   Well. Right before I wrote this I was smoking and as I looked down fondly at my cigarette it occurred to me that it’s now been thirty years since I had that special moment in a Holiday Inn at the bo

  --Jerome Berglund

Tuna salad dreams fly overhead.  Hunger sets in. Childhood memories –  steamy bowls of canned tomato soup &  white bread sandwiches, crusts cut off –  soft & squishy. The warmth of youth,  when life was simpler. Checkered sheets  & floral print towels, an era from past pages.  Stories written in a lined black marbled  notebook with a leaky fountain pen.  Poems written in hope / words full of life. Resonate! Hand-me-down clothes & second-hand dreams. Walking backwards through a lintel of lost time.  Craving a taste of the past / I walk into the kitchen to prepare a tuna salad dream.  --Ann Christine Tabaka

they say mary wollstonecraft shelley kept her husband's heart wrapped in his poetry, maybe love and poetry aren't dead after all; but if i had your heart in my hands after you died it's because i carved it out because the love here is more dead than mary herself— my heart turned indifferent, angry, cruel, and dark at the sound of your name when your poured your lies out insisting lust was love but you never loved me; i gave you my naked soul when you only craved my naked body like some carnal devourer of temples— don't worry i grew a new heart, and the temple has been cleansed with fire; your darkness cannot find me any longer but my rage will burn you with those orange knots of sunlight that tangoed with my hair that you photographed once. -linda m. crate