Punk Monk Press/Magazine

Carla perched on her haunches, examined her foot. The rusty metal fangs of the bear-trap had chomped straight through her flesh, impaled the bones. The fierce snap was fast, brutal as a well aimed gunshot. She registered it a few seconds before she felt the pain sear through her leg. It coursed through her body, her muscles tensed and the nerves in her teeth squealed their empathised agony. No tears escaped her eyes. No sound trickled from her lips. Instead she somehow manoeuvred herself into a position where she could inspect the damage. The rational part of her brain labelled her present condition as shocked. Inside her head, brain cells sizzled, sent their message to her obedient voice box. Soon, a slow but determined giggle began to erupt within her throat. Almost uncontrollable. The orange flecks that coated the sturdy metal seeped into her torn flesh. Her blood oozed out of the wound. The teeth of the bear-trap leered up at her with its raspberry jam smile. Carla suspe

BLACKENED Memories blackened Daydreams blackened Love blackened by her shadow (I cannot grow in it) by her fiery grip (and I suffocate) by her heel (I flatten like a bug) I drown in her version of love Her passionate hate a bottomless fissure Her will a cloud of furrowed dust that blots the sun Her will a rainfall that pounds endlessly without respite killing the battered roots Blackened in her glare Charred by gleaming eyes of accusation Her fist her mercury tongue a barrage The skin falls from the bone and she wears the skin and dulls the bone into a flawless uselessness I cannot look into her face – a face of glass and ice without compassion or aching The mouth that demeans The lips that deny The eyes that wither The ears that ignore She is not a rifle She is a needle She is a gasoline soaked rag She is a scalpel Deliberate is the word Careful to only cut out what is still soft, not blackened, not touched yet by her poison She eats my flesh and throws my eyes to starving vultures

Ectothermic humans crank the thermostat northwards at work, at their desks where they live for eight hours- the entire time of sunlight. Skin, muscle, organs freeze when I turn down the dial, statues they become for torment to pass the hours away to nefarious acts to kill boredom. Fist-sized hail pummels the asphalt-tiled roof, holes appear, when the sun sits her brilliance, rays descend to thaw these bodies raw. Arise from chairs and desks they finally can, to walk in air unfiltered, and feel natural light, without choice because the electronics are destroyed. --S. P. Flannery

W hen she reveals her- self in all of her sad and naked glory, it's difficult to resist suck- ing at the swollen teat of Misery the first taste of a wretched intimacy as disillusion- ment surges, hardening in the face of pale dawn an incidental voyeur slipping past the blind venetians who ask if they should even care whether the sun is rising or setting while poverty dark-winged is closing in and outside the window of a squalid bedroom a ravening wind cries with the pity of ravens. --Jack T. Marlowe

WHAT IF What if and oh god that hurts, god that smarts on a scale of one to ten definitely an eight and a half and only that What if, what ever, because you never say ten always leave room at the top, what oh, oh my tongue, my splitting head and the stitch in my side What if, what was it, what time were we supposed to be there, what happened inside me is happening inside you, what now What a joke you, we are and the pain rises up again like a great dark bird, leaves eight and a half far below looks so small down there. What was and is and ever shall or shall not be for you, from me, is the thing that lies broken on the floor What a day, life, pain in the ass, what again what was it, where did I leave it, wherever did it go. INTENDED AS A CUTTING REMARK She walked out on a Friday morning just after breakfast, shoes and poodle in tow

Screams on a silent roadway Brush strokes of red flames searing the sky Hissing moldering ashes once called homes Crackle like crushed crickets to the ground Background soldiers peering lackadaisically at immolation Without dismay Lighting cigarettes Cradling their rifles like suckling infants She bellows At the indignity of her clothes Evaporating in bits of charred cloth and flesh Trailing behind her-- At her adolescent body aflame, Of relentless pain Neurons and dendrites screaming Thin arms tattooing a desperate dispatch In a photograph that sealed her in the prison of memory A hollow O forming her Munchlike face That photograph rests on kitchen tables Saddening some munching their toast and jam Sipping their morning coffees, looking at her naked body Gratifying others who proclaim it bosh Pleased that the gooks were suffering Ice-cream scooped soul torn from the photograph Vanilla survivor Takes spider-net building licks at

paycheck to paycheck I just want to hoist a hand-cannon and heave hollow-points into the soft skulls of fat men in three piece suits and gold watches so I can dig through their deep pockets and buy the American Dream at no cost to me. --Steve Calamars