Punk Monk Press/Magazine

The doctor says the o-word and it hangs like a guillotine in the air. Your father asks,  If this was your child?  The doctor says,  Yes, of course. Without a doubt. Do I have your permission?  Your mother, exhausted from delivering you, is crumpled on the bed, her open-backed gown still pushed up around her wet thighs. Your father looks at his wife, at her damp curls slicked back. She is too scared to cry. That's when your father says it.  Yes.  You imagine that tiny yes fluttering down from your father's lips like a falling maple seed. Sometimes it is a helpless yes, a grasping yes, a choking yes, a yes that wraps itself around his throat until it squeezes the last drop of air from his soft esophagus. Sometimes it is a mean yes, a cruel yes, a yes delivered in relief, a yes uttered simply so the decision will be behind him. And sometimes it is a no-yes, a yes that might have been conceived of as a no, a no that might have morphed into a yes, spontaneously, on his lips, like

Black tie-dye canaries stall the hands of time cradling infants still umbilicalled in the hanging garden’s euphemism Cataclysms and Catholism may be the answer to a self-imposed self-apocalyptic junk-alcoholic veering down the tracks @ a 125 miles per hour but I can’t see the moon trying to  eclipse the sky for it is fucked as I am fucked LA must be a logical place harboring my body as an epileptic earthquake the Richter scale reads: 10+10+10, and I wished my superficial girlfriend would stop reading me bedtime stories gauged with animalstic fairy tales of skid row; I feel barbaric and I want to conquer Germania just to fuck with the demon dogs in her head but she constricts and I have flash backs of birth of contractions of gestation of copulation, and I can see my mother poetically broken by what took an eternity to create merely took seconds to destroy- and the roses smell pretty, still -- Devlin De La Chapa

I listen Will it ever end? Her gentle, velvety voice mimicking childish sobs amidst animal grunts   Head under pillow Camping in Africa on a space ship in Galactica; an unseen witness to murder in an abandoned graffiti-coloured crime district     I cradle my teddy bear, close to my chest, covered head to toe in my feathery nest.     I stroke it whisper You’re not alone I’m here. Shh, don’t cry Fingers in ears so hard it hurts to avert my ache—her cries—his screeching—the insufferable thunderous thump through thin floor     I climb out of bed, creep down the hall, peer through the crack of the kitchen door.   Grey netting hangs from naked papery breasts, dark purple tulle fastened round her waist black smudges smeared ’cross her face. patterned like lace wet stringy hair sticks to her brow her neck wet cotton sweat toxic breath menstruation blood the onion soup we ate for lunch— I dry-wretch     It stops—silence Her arms hover in the air. Twisted

           Animal sounds exploded from my parents’ room late at night. From the bottom bunk, I could hear my sister’s breathing, quiet and steady as my own. I covered my head with a pillow and waited for it to be over, for the sounds to stop. He’s going to crush her, I thought. I waited to hear my mom’s voice or her footstep, light, in the hallway. She never came. My father walked heavy to the bathroom, running water, coughing. No mom. She was still alive in the morning, but tired. The circles had purpled under her eyes.                Today I can see her then, eyes turned to the ceiling, searching for some pattern, waiting for the light to come. She is holding her breath, being forced against the sheet, mattress springs in her back. Where was it before her? Where is he taking her and when will he get there? Her face has turned toward morning drifting through the window. Maybe she is waiting for me to save her, to meet her in the bathroom to nurse her

What if I were to reach the height of life Aged, alone, unmarried rotting with the walls eating their pet rats in my New York New York apartment awaiting a vicious horde of angels to sweep me off my feet infect my lungs with cosmic dust rather rationalizing reality an indivisible banner ravaged by Gale of Perspective What if I were to be Aged, alone, unmarried   -- Jeremiah Walton    

You told me I was ugly.   You told me I was cold.   You said my surface beauty meant compassionless.   You called me selfish bitch .   You called me trashy slut .   You stuck your fingers in your cunt, ran them through my tangled hair, spat in my face -- I let you.   You liked to slap me.   You needed to choke me.   You encouraged me to drive a knife into my trusting arm.   But still I stroked your cheek when you’d overdose, because I loved you like a child who had no where else to turn.   But, Mother can you please release me from your twisted grip? I know it’s not a prison cell, but heavy grief grows mould.   I need to clean these chains— these strings of velvet woe, before these memories stimulate one more masticating echo.       -- Jessica Bell

For 48 hours, strangers paraded up cold,  concrete steps, investigating a lifetime  of collectibles, fishing lures, marina sketches, chopped  bits of animal pelts he had placed inside boxes  like trophies. Dusty books about ancient aliens,  Yukon prostitutes, and PCs for Dummies  bordered the edges of each room, showing off  those subjects that had consumed his mind  in private. The procession continued after the burial, each visitor anxious to get their hands on a piece  of his life’s work, odd figurines, food choppers, Hummels  with missing body parts, and miscellaneous books  on how to be a millionaire in secret.  A blue-haired lady wearing a tight  bun gaped in disgust. The man who’d fed her family  40 years of fish dinners was a disgrace, his home gutted,  his skeletons laid out on the table for all of the hungry  bargain hunters to see. --Linda G. Hatton