Punk Monk Press/Magazine

Abolish golf courses  bc  Tiger Woods    is not an animal and Utah  is  a desert   Stop breeding the cows and  just so you    can squee z e their tits    Stop eating tiger testicles    They  won’t  make your dick bigger   There’s  no such thing as an alpha male    Grow your own food    If you see someone step on a snail   look at  em  funny   Call Mario and tell him to stop    stealing  Koopa’s  shell   Stop writing nature poems    & start  sabotaging your neighbor’s sprinklers     In real life,  Spongebob   is  a blackened blob    & Patrick  dry  as a toothbrush    Don’t  feed the  ducks  bread    Feed the  cops  to the pigs    There’s  no such thing as a humane way to kill anything    Half the animals you eat are smarter t han  you   --Foolan Flopez 

It Was Over (when it was still going on) It’s the blow of emotional journeys Ten minutes of bliss That ends in red eyes and paranoia A dumpster fire   Ten minutes of bliss That still burns low and optimistic Despite the evidence That I’m quite unrealistic   It’s good to burn So that you learn Not to stick it in a flame Not to ride ‘til it breaks Not to buy those fakes   It was over When it was still going on  Someone take these useless feelings Recycle them, build something sweet Someone take these useless feelings Spread them at his feet   Throw them in a field Bricks in a tiny house Someone take these useless feelings Take them  Spread them out   It’s good to burn So that you learn Not to stick it in the flame Not to ride ‘til it breaks Not to buy those fakes   It was over When it was still going on --Jude Klassen  Listen to a musical version of this poem sung by Jude Klassen and composed by  Asher Ettinger, with TC Folkpunk on guitar. 

Sleepover  Lights off & wink at me next  To the 1996 fax machine,  Watch my comedic fall onto A sea of fibers woven into circles,  Our 3:31am game of mafia  Has just concluded As I listen to you read off  Christian-approved questions,  I recall the way the cookie layer Of the DQ birthday cake  Dripped down your lower lips  While coated in melted vanilla soft serve Years after your newly-divorced mother picked you up in her Subaru minivan,  And you flew off to the West Coast  To become a militant vegan, I still recall The nights we laid in plastic bags  As the dawn of change drew near  --Morgan Boyer

The Eleonore is secretly a bitter enemy of the male. She is a great betrayer of tenderness, she will crack open any egg, reveal its yolk, and then devour it. Without remorse she will lay waste to the infrastructure of romance— nature's most fragile and beautiful invention. She is an agent of chaos, destroying everything in her path. Why's that? -- You ask She's a woman, that's how they always are– And I hate having to deal with that assumption. --Claudia Wysocky 

At this point, I can’t remember if I’m in counseling because I like to starve myself or because I like to cut my wrists at night and fall asleep to the sting. My parents tell me I go because they don’t want to lose me, but I am already lost. They don’t seem to know this. I exist in fragments and pieces, and the lady in front of me would do little to assemble them.  “Are you cutting yourself? I will have to tell your mom if you are lying.” She inspects my wrists with their faint scars and old wounds. I stare at the clock while she does this. When she is satisfied, I pull down my gray hoodie sleeves. I have won this session between me and the Christian lady. My cuts are etched on my upper thighs and sides. My body cannot be taken away from me, and even though my parents meticulously counted every knife, they did not count the one I swiped from Belk.  The lady, like every week, opens the bible. This time, she tells me to treat my body like a temple. A temple should not be cut, and it shou