Punk Monk Press/Magazine

  -- Ruthenium  

We just get done  Picking our health insurance    Mandatory open enrollment  And outside, gray and cold clouds  But no rain    The threat, maybe  Prevents me from staining the  Kid’s playground  Like I’ve talked about doing  The last three weeks    I shuffle off to my den  Like a Thorazine victim  And do crunches  And leg lifts because its  Too cold to go out  Too cold to plant a garden    Check email  Wish for something to say  So maybe I can blog for a living – instead of this  Put little exclamation points in the  Upper right hand corner of the page  Of all the poems I like    And maybe soon go to the library  I’ll need a book to listen to on the way to work tomorrow And these odometers and overdue  Notices and missed opportunities  Don’t have me.  Yet.     I find it hard to believe  People can make a living off advertisement  Till I go outside, till I go where the people do  And see the way they dress  The way they move, and  Talk and ignore each other like marked fire hydrants  Of

Since Punk Monk Magazine has publications stacked up until Summer next year, and my work/school load is proving cumbersome, submissions for Poetry, Fiction, CNF, and Art will be CLOSED until June 2023.  MUSIC MARGINS, STITCHES, and OM submissions will remain open. All pending submissions will be considered with love and care.  Expect semi-regular publications until submissions re-open, and remember to follow our Twitter for updates!  Stay Bold.  Stay Kind.  Stay Alive.  Stay Creative!  💕C E Hoffman  EIC Punk Monk Magazine

Trauma has a funny way of sneaking up on me. There are swaths of time where my memories are blank from years of deliberate suppression. I'm sure my ability to dissociate helps as well. I worked with my first therapist for five years, sometimes twice a week, and we had yet to dig into all my trauma. I often feel like I wasted valuable time with her, but that's not the subject of this story. I do miss her, though. Anyhow, in the last year, it feels like a flood gate has opened in my brain. Memories I once thought dead are resurrecting themselves like blood-thirsty zombies. My mind is a battlefield, and I've been thrown into the war woefully unprepared. Now, I'm stuck facing triggers that I didn't even know I had. It is maddening.  Racing thoughts have begun to affect my life. One or two memories play on repeat lately. My sleep is awful, and I'm slipping back into bad habits. All because of one night many years ago. This was before I met my husband, obviously, but

To The Guy Wearing The Dying Fetus Shirt At The Deftones Concert in Seattle, WA on 04/16/22 I stared at the screen print on your back and saw a mirror I have been depressed since the beginning and finally felt the validation of years spent living in abstraction,  of explaining to others who have heard about ghosts, who know them as intimately as an ad in a magazine they read 20 years ago in a doctors office while waiting for test results for a condition that didn’t exist; meaning not at all I am that green, orange silhouette of half-formed life on heavy weight cotton, tour dates ordered cleanly across a 10” x 6” square;  letters fading with each wearing, subsequent wash,  grime of the pit soaked in,  disintegrating,  cheap fibers softening through force then if I am lucky, some kid will find the shirt at a swap meet, haggle with the vendor over the exorbitant price, ask to throw in for free of a pair of pleated, acid-washed jeans, a floppy / crushed hat, synthetic boots, cigarette trad

  - Iveren Cheku

1.   When I wake up it’s Sunday morning. The birds are singing. The sun is shining. And Penny is sleeping next to me. She’s curled in a tiny ball, her head resting on my stomach, pressing against my bladder. Ouch. So much for the new dog bed I got her. And she’s snoring. Loudly. So loud I can barely hear the birds anymore. Is that normal? Do dogs snore? Some do. I guess. And mine is one of them. Lovely.          2.   I know what you think. I’m throwing a temper tantrum over a sweet, homeless, little dog. A dog I never asked for. A dog I never wanted. And yet here she is. You think I’m being ridiculous, immature, and delusional. You’re right. I am. And I don’t plan to stop. Not soon. No. Not yet. Change is not my friend. Never has been. Never will be. I don’t handle change well. Especially big changes. And this one is huge. Mammoth. It could take a while. And it will. This tantrum. I’m just saying. So there.        3.   Penny opens her eyes. She reaches up, puts her paws on my shoulder,

Meditations on a woman who wore sunflowers and represented an organization that told me my accessibility needs were unreasonable and arguably crazy    Fuck your sunflowers that you’ve turned into safety pins/this is not about solidarity or peace/no I do not want war/I do not want us to invade/I wear a sunflower because it is a fucking threat/let this grow out of your pockets when you are bones/you thought you could kill us/do what you want we are cockroaches/I don’t care if that’s morbid I don’t care if I’m morbid have you looked outside at all?/you could say I’m screaming into the void but listen if I can still scream you haven’t shut me up yet/they said I was rude/ called my art bitchy and whiny and annoying/there is something undeniably  feminine * about my h y s t e r i a/ Joan of Arc didn’t carry a sword she carried a banner/ I have never hit anyone not even a Nazi/I thought about it and I’m glad some people do/I support it entirely/my first activism was trying to stop them from c