Punk Monk Press/Magazine

God Helps Those Who Edit      A couple of months ago I began collecting my Union Pension Retirement Benefits.   Funny thing is I don’t belong to a union.     I’ll tell you what aroma therapy is, sitting on my balcony on a late autumn afternoon next to a Sensemia plant in full bloom.  With pipe in hand, I think of all the things I could do if I wasn’t so stoned.     So much energy goes into making a poem I’m surprised sometimes they don’t explode.  --Alan Simmons 

  --Mia Amore Del Bando

A Little Glory on the Page, Please Written upon seeing an ad for a workshop that promises the student will leave with “ten perfect poems”   I need poems that fish pants out  of the clean but never-folded pile, poems  so creased they can’t be ironed smooth.  Read me poems that burst into tears  at the breakfast table, sob into their cereal,  dribble milk onto their wrinkled, untucked  shirts. Hand me crinkled pages, poems that struggle w/ the alphabet, always put “O”  after “P,” think “Q” shouldn’t need “U” all  the goddamn time. Give me upside down  poems, stanzas hard-shelled & towering  like broken vending machines, poems  w/ unshakable attitude & charm so thick  they might nosedive into arrogance.  I like a poem I’ve got to keep an eye on,    one w/ lines that hit like liquid acid  or rails of white powder. Fuck placebo  poems. Tease me w/ poems that leave  lingering stains: spills of merlot, smears  of lipstick, haunting coffee cup circles,  each mark a whirl of memory. A f

                                                                  Roadside Salvation Mike and I had been thumbing for an hour when a decrepit car pulled over to the shoulder and ground to a shuddering halt. The driver was a clean-shaven, thirtysomething man with mirrored sunglasses and an open-necked shirt. He looked harmless enough. “I’m only going ninety miles. It’ll get you closer, anyway. There’s stuff in the back seat. Just toss it anywhere.” Mike and I pushed an assortment of tools, boots, and newspapers to the floor. The car merged into traffic. Our driver gazed at the road with a thoughtful expression, like he was trying to figure out why we were hitchhiking on a Louisiana freeway during the hottest month of the year. Finally, he turned his head and smiled. “I’m Joe. Where are you two headed?” “Illinois,” I said. “It’s a long story.” “I’m a good listener.” Lots of people claimed to be good listeners before shifting the conversation to themselves. I usually avoided self-disclosu

If Only   We’d bought more books read more written more poems (good ones at that) fallen in love more fucked more eaten the free bread at every restaurant volunteered more visited new places the ocean the park the office  the graves of your parents grandparents laid in bed more seen more experimental films tried the Ethiopian spot down the street taken more bruises on the left cheek fought more cooked more bled more hugged more given more kissed far far more died more before we all burned but there was always work.  --C.M. Crockford