Punk Monk Press/Magazine

i am the masc champagne can you withstand this much pine?  could you bench press the forest,  or the ratty plaid couch or at least these  two hottie exchange students? they giggle  into their red cups, and i fill it  with hard effervescence. i am  the sexy italian renaissance christ  embodied, my blood in this tap  drink drink drink to become  (a type of) god, too. --Alison Lubar

My greatest loves I loved in spite of themselves, though I always hoped for something  more true; yet, here I am, left  with only a spiteful God, who is a spitting image  of you. --Kelly Moyer

One morning, around the age of forty, I woke up, and my boyfriend of fourteen years  said, "Honey, I have some bad news. I'm breaking up with you." So, I said, "Well, here's  some more not-so-great news, you're fifty, and Bigfoot isn't real. Enjoy living with your parents." I met Jack in my twenties at a show we were both doing at a comedy club in Los Angeles. It was 1995, amid the OJ trial madness, which doesn't matter except that we saw Marsha Clark, the lead prosecutor, at a bar later that night which was weird. She has super curly hair, by the way. After that, we made out in my car until the wee hours of the morning, which lead to us spending the next decade and a half of our lives together. For the record, I don't usually make out with men I've just met. Okay, sure, a couple or three times, but a lady can't allow such behavior to become a habit. However, it could not be helped because he was charming, funny, and handsome with big

the truth is that i think myself a bird — everytime i wake up with a song weighing down on my tongue / the truth is that i think myself a bird — when my lover carries all of me in  hands accustomed to holding something so fragile /                                                                                              / the truth is that i think.  dear reader —  in this poem — i am a shapeless thing / i am more than 70% water / i was thrown into life & left to take the form of the dreams i cannot even call my own / & one day some  years ago — i walked out of my own body & forgot my way back / now — the emptiness i feel inside has been replaced by the many selves that make up what is left of me / now you see why i sometimes think myself a bird / or a sad story / or a broken window / or a fleshy door that allows all the sadness to pass through without being unhinged / or  even a mere thing that cries alone & calls it prayer / i bet you thought this was going to be a

  --Logan O'connor

The night after maami was laid 6ft deep in the ruthless earth, Tunde lit a cigarette and settled at the backyard to smoke. I observed him from the kitchen window. No, I won't go outside and pass judgement; after all, both of us have been engulfed in our own sins since maami's death. I was angry, though I can't quite put my finger on the source of my anger. Perhaps it was Uncle Ade's bellowing, demanding more beers for him and his friends earlier today at the funeral service. Ever since father's demise, none of his relatives reached out or showed up. But Uncle Ade had the audacity to come to this house for maami's funeral, demanding beer to be served to him and his friends. I wished for him to choke on it, his body discarded like refuse on a dunghill. However, this alone didn't trigger my anger enough; it's something else I can't quite fathom. The night maami breathed her last at 7:00pm, Tunde was at her side. As her life slipped away, Tunde draped he

I first performed words I’d written with punk bands in stale-beer smelling small clubs downtown, or any random spot we found: a half-finished internet cafe, community centres, somebody’s basement, the movie theatre’s parking lot, or a rented karate dojo. It wasn't winning a bank-sponsored  Promising Young Writer of Tomorrow prize with ceremonies and dignitaries giving praise. If you’d like to unlock my inner punk rock singer, pick a human being and deify them in front of me  say you actually can't believe you're really in their presence  and my eyes will roll so far back I'll be inspecting my brain stem. I'm not a high modernist waxing poetic on BBC. Honestly, I feel more affinity for the Sex Pistols saying fuck on TV, dissing royalty, or Johnny Rotten pulling back the curtain  on Britain's beloved Jimmy Saville and when the predatory celebrities of this world fall I’d rather not be seen shaking their hands in photographs. My sympathies lie with whoever’s strugg

  --Bob McNeil