Punk Monk Press/Magazine

  On rental bed in the apartment where her drunken boyfriend peed on borrowed living room furniture late one fall, she gripped the phone with moistened hand, wet from the news that you were marrying someone else, knowing she deserved better than getting pissed on, knowing still it was all she had left   -- Linda G. Hatton    

You’re no longer my lover not since you twisted that speculum inside me, to examine my connective tissue.  Revision: fuck. Watch the blood and filaments and flipper- feet expand then contract when untimely ripp’d.  Black specks. bulbous brain cavity swimming in an air-less bucket, seeing and not seen in the amniotic fluid within the bubblegum sphere. you walked out this morning.  Pacing as you turned your panties inside- out.  Slid one hole up your leg, then the other. Cloudy silhouette, still now – you look at me. Are you crying? When our eyes meet, this time- I feel nothing. And I didn’t even get to tell you, how pretty your dress looks, when you’re on your knees, disinfected.

Already lived in too many places- could make a necklace with all the keys. So many faces blurring into one, some man-god stuck-up and stupid. Only one I don't want to forget... After a while he saw past me, what I would probably become. He told me and left before I could beg him to take me. Probably the years between us would widen too much. This is what I tell myself, when the night stretches me out on my bed, comfort of his words still in my head. Long nights hanging heavy around my neck, those keys staining a rust river running between my breasts, dripping into emptiness. --Anita McQueen

A Pussy Riot masque-- Faces tucked beneath cowls They gyrate madly Awkward Elaine-dancing-sisters Weeble and wobble To punk rhythms, agitated dys-syncopated sixteenth notes of protest. Freedom dances in their heads head-clanging freedom songs Thirty seconds of cause célèbre Joyful kerfuffle Marshall McLuhan would have relished. Congregants sizzle, nuns shackle themselves to the foofaraw elders shoo them from the altar. Police indignation hies them from the scene where they languish in cells. Soft-shelled crab, Vlad the Impaler, skin so sere blood flows like lava just below the surface. Put in chains-- Free speech, they learn Has its limits. --Sy Roth

anxiety encumbers the soul    melancholy+depression—colour of coal      life is tiring coal in this regard is the antonym of ease the way a tight pair of black stockings    [wraps]       chubby thighs tearing the pair of s/t/o/c/k/i/n/g/s away                                 is the synonym of ease liberation+euphoria—colour of light -- Ali Znaidi

Back Beat? I wish I knew you or understood you when you speak to me or even when you don't speak to me when you say don't go don't stay don't talk don't think don't speak don't walk don't wait don't feel just fuck just fuck just fuck you say the words like fists strike me batter me batter my mind batter it hard until it drips with thick golden goo and drops to the steaming pavement in a bubbling ball smashed flat with an old wrought iron plate that probably belongs in my head grey and cold like the lock on my belt my chastity belt your toy you like me to wear you know so only you can fuck me or maybe so only I get fucked I never could get that right or straight as the way to hell that's where I'm going nowhere else to go but down down but only when we fuck then go down way down on a spiraling slide of darkness that spits me out regurgitates that sticky white wad of me right back into the misunderstanding of your arms. Resp

lie awake at midnight guitar leaning against the laundry basket unloved/untouched for weeks   poems circling my brain like the voice of satan at his naughtiest    and   callous as a cloud.   at just gone midnight the face of a girl explodes deep in my chest   and I can't remember the last time I fell for somebody who fell for me less.   at ten past midnight picturing a short skirt on the most beautiful  brown skin   a voice quiet as meditation   eyes deep as honey.   two more days before I fall numb at your alter once more   and there is nothing so crushingly soulless   as the meandering of minutes. -- Ross Leese

The Vegas airport has sinks stacked against the wall, each with a streak of rust, brown, orange, blackening It makes me wonder how many people have cried to rust away fake porcelain. --Emily Ramser