Punk Monk Press/Magazine

Poser I take the order of a punk with a jacket littered with patches and pins  that are not timid in the way I so often am.  The only good fascist is a dead fascist  adorns his breast and when I compliment it his face lights up, the word  brother  rolling off his tongue as he reaches out a fist to consummate  the connection.  When the next person in line takes too much time to fish their platinum card out of their Dolce and Gabbana wallet, I grit my teeth into a smile and dream of anarchy. --Conor Whalen

First Date   We were walking in the woods at night in December. I knew when I first spoke to him that he’d let me be weird, which I appreciated, so there we were. The tree branches looked like emaciated limbs. It would have been terrifying if I’d been alone. He was wearing a varsity jacket, but he was rich and only played tennis which he forced me to do when he eventually decided he was going to hate me. I don’t think we held hands, but he offered me his leather gloves. It made sense that he used to ride a motorcycle. He was so hot I figured he probably wanted to kill himself sometimes. That’s usually how it goes.  While I looked between tree trunks for ghosts, I told him about a dream I had where I stuck my head in an oven. And another where doctors were cutting my feet open to cure the Alzheimer’s I had. It’s because I’m on antidepressants. Oh my God, that’s insane, he said. I smiled at him and imagined what it’d be like to have him on top of me. He said, I used to have a therapist,

 Rebel Reviews is a new section of Punk Monk written by C.E. Hoffman. Click here to learn more/submit a review request.  What is behind the ghost metropolis?  I wonder this as I flip (okay, scroll) through Dabrowska’s earnest, bloody poems.  This is the kind of material Punk Monk loves to publish, and I love to read. Annette describes her debut collection as reflecting “the darker side of the mind - loneliness, mental health, trauma, but also hope, travel, and strength.”  Couldn’t have said it better myself. This collection is sincere. Searing. Surreal. So. Fucking. Relatable. I feel like my shadow can chill a minute, ‘cause Annette’s busy tearing up the room.  Don’t expect fancy shit. Expect instead the kind of gothy goodness we scribbled under the stairs, under our beds, in the corners of our parents’ basements. It brings me back to Buffy (which I’m binging for spooky season btw), Hedwig and the Angry Inch, me at thirteen obsessing over Emily Dickinson. It’s nostalgia. It’s pain.

Nocturia In my bedroom are people I do not know. If I knew them I would still wonder why they were here and how they got in. Am I dreaming this? I’ll know soon enough. I eat a banana for breakfast. It is very yellow but tastes  like raw potato. Ride a streetcar to the weed store, load up for the weekend. The vendor has no teeth. Ride the streetcar back. I am alone. When I look up I see the streetcar is driverless. Am I dreaming this? Sooner or later I’ll know. --Sal Difalco

  --Lorin Cary

I have a dream : Ban abortion in Croatia by: Vice Batarelo, April 7, 2024.   Where is the public discussion now  about the shameful  industrial  massacre  of unborn children in Croatia  called  abortion? One extremist left-wing party says that they will insert this "right" into the Croatian Constitution, while other politicians and  society ...remain silent. Or maybe we don't want to talk about it now because it's "inconvenient".  We don't want  "confrontation". We want to be " nice " people. Or  maybe some think it is "prudent", we will not talk about it now or write it in our programs, "BUT when we come to power, then we will act". What a platitude. Not  good enough, we expect much more.  When  are we  going to talk about it if not now!?! And as voters,  citizens , Catholics and people of good will, we must tell them this, and not play their games. I hardly believe  politicians when they say something, I believe

Not Fair   Life is like Fair when it is not fair. Some people have lots and Some people have nothing. Why did god make money? He should have stopped after He made dolphins. --Dominik Slusarczyk 

I: Sleep Sleeping on the couch, again and again and again, over and over 'til the end of eternity, or at least until all the sheep have been accounted for, and Mr. Sandman has hung up his cap and gown. I'll be there: The renegade insomniac backpack warrior, stars as my map and streetlights like inkblots spilling across canvas; Jackson Pollock ain't got shit on urban hellscapes. From sweaty leather upholstery in Arizona to a fold-out futon in New Jersey, every couch holds a history. I've been there listening at 3 A.M. (the witches' hour): Whispers of a story in every stain and echoes of a memory in every rusty creak  of well-worn springs. Inhale deep: The dust and dander, smoke and mold. Light breeze from the window. This couch has lived. Exhale and let go. You've been there before, You'll be there again. There's nothing but time from here 'til eternity.  II: Dream Back in the beginning there were nights where I would sleep on the couch for the fun of

A Biter, a Fighter, & a Fox (or, Why Vita Left L.A.) by Vita Tate   i.  2009 and sixteen-year-old Vita poses too-cool-for-school against a kitchen counter of a trashed Laurel Canyon cottage rented by three twenty-something wannabe actors. The men are throwing yet another young Hollywood party to seduce underage models with trust funds and belly button rings, hoping that the girls’ll convince their producer daddies to put the guys on TV. Since Vita is absolutely no one, she shows up to drink their booze and smoke their cigarettes and bolt when the men get too stoned to follow. For months they’ve been playing cat-and-mouse in a game where there’s no mice, only predators, just ’cause she’s homeschooled and bored and thrives on the rush of unrealized desire.   Shot after shot after shot and the alcohol’s getting to her lil baby brain so Vita pours tequila number four on their sneakers while they blabber about some big-budget blah blah blah. Dax is led away by a prettier younger blonde

Untitled  It was another bloodless revolution  today at Starbucks. I myself spoke  for twenty-three minutes straight  and at the end no one knew what I'd said.  As Q-Tip pointed out somewhere in the canon,  that is some heartfelt shit here.  Moment  I was in the ER with my little sister worried and wondering just how selfish it would be if I got up and walked to the bathroom to pee and get a drink from the faucet— all of the fountains were still shut down— and then I wondered how selfish it would be to read my Dean Koontz and as all this appeared in my mind I wondered how selfish it is to compose a poem in your head when your sister’s in the ER and then my revery was broken when my sister interrupted the silence and said, “This is how I should start my memoir. You know, In Media Res.”   Well. Right before I wrote this I was smoking and as I looked down fondly at my cigarette it occurred to me that it’s now been thirty years since I had that special moment in a Holiday Inn at the bo

  --Jerome Berglund

Tuna salad dreams fly overhead.  Hunger sets in. Childhood memories –  steamy bowls of canned tomato soup &  white bread sandwiches, crusts cut off –  soft & squishy. The warmth of youth,  when life was simpler. Checkered sheets  & floral print towels, an era from past pages.  Stories written in a lined black marbled  notebook with a leaky fountain pen.  Poems written in hope / words full of life. Resonate! Hand-me-down clothes & second-hand dreams. Walking backwards through a lintel of lost time.  Craving a taste of the past / I walk into the kitchen to prepare a tuna salad dream.  --Ann Christine Tabaka

they say mary wollstonecraft shelley kept her husband's heart wrapped in his poetry, maybe love and poetry aren't dead after all; but if i had your heart in my hands after you died it's because i carved it out because the love here is more dead than mary herself— my heart turned indifferent, angry, cruel, and dark at the sound of your name when your poured your lies out insisting lust was love but you never loved me; i gave you my naked soul when you only craved my naked body like some carnal devourer of temples— don't worry i grew a new heart, and the temple has been cleansed with fire; your darkness cannot find me any longer but my rage will burn you with those orange knots of sunlight that tangoed with my hair that you photographed once. -linda m. crate