Punk Monk Press/Magazine

Half of these people  think I’m better off dead  on the side of the road like a dog. But the negro in me won’t give up. We are always giving white people what they want. I think I should live forever  just to spite them. I never feel like I’m going to make it to the next year but then I do. I am always stronger than I think I am. / I am always as strong as they think I am. Which is a problem. I don’t want them to think they can just do anything to me.  --Mia Maisha 

The Dollhouse is custom made to look like my house, our house. My new wife’s idea—for Sarah. Same front elevation. Duplicate floor plan. But my step daughter’s attempt to match furniture placement is off. I nudge the miniature hutch to its true location. She frowns, pushes my hand away, makes me move to the front yard, so to speak. I look at her through the windows. She appears as if a Goliath child. My sling: empty after repeated attempts to penetrate the four walls of her heart. I lean low, peer inside the front door. “Knock, knock,” I say. She never answers. --Keith Hoerner 

In a mental hospital the birds are singing, Joyous, free from all fragments of measurable time And I in my green hospital pyjamas Navigate the shores of illness. The world has opened up to me  And I fell right in. I focus on the notes coming from the trees, Invisible, unrepentant, as the morning air becomes  Oerweighed  By the evening’s dark light, Composing lines of written memory, As grief overtakes my heart. --David Hay