Punk Monk Press/Magazine

There are some nights when I love my life albeit whiskey-soaked and karaoke-laden with slutty passes at bearded men. My former life was liquid flammable liver...unfriendly poor but the happiest life I've ever had, the best I could ever imagine. Songs meant something and sex meant more, especially with post-suicide Elliot Smith, depressed and urging you to fuck on, young soldiers, fuck on. As much as I grasp at it, my unsatisfactory life pays my bills stamping me into the masses unfortunate unwelcoming reformed unhappy people. I don't want to die like this sated. fat. but not alive. Still Siouxie and her bansees never bring me home. And I have just one more donut, sugar to sate my libido, my life, my soul. --Jessica Gleason

I'm getting chubby with my cat Our white bellies relaxing, in disbelief White bones long gone, now that White powders are further, their grief No longer mine, you are what you eat consumer culture white plastic bags drug culture white wrapped drags white toilet vultures Low self esteem is an effective gag My white belly was a full moon I would have named her after you It was too late, and too soon Three white pills, and my white washed bathroom was red for three days White school halls white paper tests never got to drag her away from herself White washed sexual education pee stick test Angry fathers lacerations Take a drag, away from myself And yet we hope That they'll grow up in kindness Or at least silence dissociation is an effective gag --Sophia Kelly

Hot words spewed from dog stained fire hydrants in a sweltering Spanish Harlem July noche Vatos sat on concrete stoops comparing nine and ten millimeter chrome plated equalizers, pretty mamacitas Flashed Ladysmith.38’s and legs all the way to heaven, they all knew a double tap was a one way ticket to gone.  --Catfish McDaris

we’re too young and too eager to be watching girls and boys in gold bodysuits and lace corsets shaking and stumbling across the stage and our mothers wouldn’t appreciate our purple lipstick and craft store rhinestones lighting the way down our necks to our collarbones that boy who thinks he knows how the universe works compared you to nicotine when he strapped you down to the pages of his notebook and sold you for a penny per word, and now he’s here smoking girls by the pack out by the curb and putting them out against the concrete – an affair that was high risk but low consequence. you hold a dollar bill between your teeth, gripping washington by the throat and when the girl in pasties and a stockings and little else brushes your chin, you tell yourself you’ve found another person to ruin you. you’re part of an eight-eyed animal clad in velvet and sickly sweet body spray that still burns the throat worse than the lukewarm liquor you kept in a water bottle.

This piece was originally performed at Cha Island on March 26, 2015 for our local Speak Your Peace! event. It was amazing. Success Story Sometimes, people want to hear a success story. They want to hear about the guy who was bullied for years, rose above the pain, and got his life together. They want to hear a romantic rendition of a queer cinderella story coupled with beautiful transition, "this boy was born female and now look at him!", or when specifically talking with /me/, "I keep forgetting...h e/him, got it, I'll try harder next time." I appreciate you, more than words can express, but I'm trapped. Trapped as a boy, trapped as a girl, not manly enough, not pretty enough, desperately clinging onto a time someone said I was beautiful and didn't care what that meant and now -- anyone can grab a movie on Netflix, or take a walk to a gay bar where you get to see two hot chicks making out, and all I can ever think is damn -- is it too late to go b