Punk Monk Press/Magazine

  --Edward Lee

Rat in the pool, swimming for its life.  Quick, I get the net beneath him. Spent rat, but saved. Cat streaks in, bats the squealing rat. No-o-o! Son comes at my scream. Wow!  Then  Dad, Dad, you gotta see this! I drown in their delight. --Carolyn Banks

a dysmorphic curl at the hospital as a nurse asks the last period from the curve of a breast do i owe you gender? is it a complement to your witting gaze? a pair to your judgement? just let me exist but if you want, land your gaze on my world of false earth with caverns of conceit and mirrors of malady that allow light that shuns so you know of the hole of hatred and heart that surrounds my head i don’t owe you gender as you don’t owe me your life as it stands a picture of bodily content while i wither under your gaze of wandering woe waiting for when i fall back into the black earth that covers the inside of my skin and wishes it could swallow me whole --Madeleine Chan 

Time Share(d)       It’s November again and unseasonably warm.  I think back to an evening over twenty years ago.  My father had driven my mother and I to the time share he and a law school friend went in on together.   He started drinking shortly after we arrived.  Drinking was self-medicating for my father, or at least looked like it.  He downed each bottle of beer faster than it took him to bend down and pick them up.  This behavior continued well into dinner. The three of us had gotten into an argument that evening.  Mother had been holding me close to her, crying, begging my father to stop.  Both of their voices had put the fear in me, frustrations at their peak.  The disagreement lasted ages but in reality, had only been minutes.  I forget how the shouting ended, but had nothing to do with tears being spilt.   * Later that night in bed, my mother cradled me less anxiously.  I asked her if everything was ok.  She smiled weakly, assured me that everything was how it should be.   Ho

Going the wrong way  on the Baltimore beltway,  choking on carb-flooded gas,  overheating over first date curfews as we left Carlin’s Drive-In  already an hour late.   A death trap, black ’60 Falcon,  was not only my first car,  but the first on the drug store corner  which made him a celebrity,  and yes, for sure,  he – lost half the time, on the make the other.   We’re straining brittle, bone-on-bone  ball-joints and bald tires, while keeping  right white buck and pedal to the floor,  rubbernecking to spot that landmark,  that yes-we-now-know-where-we-are,  building or corner.   The little engine that could, all the time switching channels,  constantly on alert for the right hot tune  or ‘Wild Thing’, the Beatles, or anything by the Stones  which was always right.   Your father home, cursing hippies, belting shots of bourbon - would have been loading his gun,  and waiting in the driveway  if he had seen the feature from our back seat and those coming attractions in your hair. --Craig

I pierced my ears. No ceremony, but it’s possibly been a lifetime coming. Some things are born from looser thoughts than they appear. Permanent indentation of the skin, a puncture wound that makes me feel like myself. I think and begin to fold, to shrivel. I realized I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to be a bother, but there’s nothing that can come of it. I feel like I’m across the room. An old story about trying to grab an apple that’s just too far above my head. Your head. No way to keep moving to where I want to. I don’t want to be where I was an hour ago, half an hour ago, fifteen minutes ago, anywhere. I want to stay where my new life is. I want to be where the good people are. I think they are just about where they should be, just give them a minute now. I realized the good people won’t do anything until they see my ears, because I can’t be beautiful. I’ll have to make a bit of a fuss, but I’ll let go of my hair, and then they can do what they will. I really don’t know

When he calls me a bitch,   I think  immediately  of Laika.     Laika, sole occupant of Sputnik 2.   Laika,  selected because she    was  a very good  girl—the  best  girl.   Laika, chosen from a pack of other   g irl dogs because girl dogs were    “ anatomically  better suited than    males for close confinement.”   Laika, named for the one thing   anyone bothered to learn about her   (Laika: from  layat ' , verb, “to bark”).   Laika, who was trapped, whimpering   in fear and confusion, believing    that people were to be trusted,   that men were good, were friends,   until the moment her pulse tripled,    and she overheated, and she died.   But not quickly—it took hours for her   to finally succumb to the stress of takeoff.   By then, the men on the ground  celebrated;   being unable to create life themselves,    they were content to toy with it.   Laika, who was given a statue and called   a hero; but only once she died, because    what good is a girl-hero if she lives?     When

Rerekē grips Ahi’s hand, dragging him into the middle of the pit.  His hand is too tight on his boyfriend’s, and he feels a twinge of guilt, but he knows the look on Ahi’s face, and he knows they both need this. The bass thrums through his bones and resonates in the hollowness of his prosthesis, but it feels  good .  Feels like home.  The bodies press in against them, hot and smelling of sweat and cheap beer and cigarettes, and it feels like where they should be, throats already raw from smoke and screaming the lyrics to songs they know by heart. Sometimes, when the thoughts get too loud, the only thing that drowns them out is music so loud it makes their ears ring for hours, and the taste of tobacco shared in kisses, and the bruises and scratches they’ll wear later from being thrown in with so many other bodies in a too-small space.  It’s just suffocating enough to choke out the anger and violence burning in their chests. They stay as close as they can, fists raised overhead, opposite