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DRUNK MONKEYS IS A Literary Magazine and Film Blog founded in 2011 featuring short stories, flash fiction, poetry, film articles, movie reviews, and more

Editor-in-chief KOLLEEN CARNEY-HOEPFNEr

managing editor

chris pruitt

founding editor matthew guerrero

POETRYPianoAlly Malinenko

Drunk Monkeys
Poetry

Photo by Celia Spenard-Ko on Unsplash

she hits the keys
with one finger
like she’s jabbing someone
in the shoulder
or chest during
a fight because they
refuse to listen

and then
soft like she’s
been up all night
having terrible dreams
about a man in her house
that will eat up her bones
she presses the pads
of her fingers against the keys
like they were your slumbering back
just to steady herself
in this wakefulness for just a moment

and then
harder again like a massage
like she can pet and coax out of that
brown box of strings
and hammers
all the words
her mouth
has never made.

Ally Malinenko is the author of the poetry books The Wanting Bone, How To Be An American and Better Luck Next Year as well as the novel This Is Sarah.

Featured
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POETRY / The Oncelers / Austin Sanchez-Moran

He made it possible. He was formerly a fabulist. 
He was faceless, but he was ugly, graceless 
and he made everything disappear.  

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POETRY / Rubik's Cube / M. Benjamin Thorne

aligning 
as fingers 
deftly dance 

on checkered 
smooth plastic 
disco stage 

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POETRY / Darkness, Stillness: After All of Us Strangers, 2023 / David Hanlon

Adam’s countenance: beer cask-heavy 
his eyes: glazed shallots 
his smile: a split itself 

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POETRY / Bob Ross Making Minimalist Art / Kurt Cole Eidsvig

Now take away the need 
for moisture and the deteriorating  
qualities of autumn. The veins   

and stems will release as well.  
Take away the release. Take  
away the seasons.

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POETRY / Jetlag is a choice. / Julia Rapp

When Taylor Swift was at the gym in Japan  
she watched the muscled back of a man   

moving up and down a heavy machine 
made by other heavy machines for men.   

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POETRY / I was terrified as a kid / Victoria Nordlund

of spontaneous human combustion,  
of pictures with the Cherry Hill Mall Santa, 
of a stapler after getting my wrist stuck to my teacher’s green bulletin board, 

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POETRY / Very Delta EP: #%|{<?€*¥ Are You Alone In This Universe Like Me? / Andrew Ketcham

and on the tv 
a drag queen 
sharing her recipe 
for sun tea  

asks us if we want to  
watch her take a break 
and we take a break   

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POETRY / On the Border of Blaine, 1980’s / Zebulon Huset

Honeywell closed their Minnesota plant quietly
and the addition of warning stickers on album covers
would save the children along with D.A.R.E., Nancy
and Tipper directing the conversation, for some reason.

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POETRY / Childhood / Lina Buividavičiūtė

I read, I traveled, I, Lina, thief’s daughter, a discarded toy by the campfire 
at night, my planets – burned by sparks, 
burned by coincidences, in my eyelashes – stalagmites of ashes. 

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POETRY / You Still Owe Me a Dance / Marissa Glover

Because Phil Collins is for fools and old ladies.  
Because the ocean’s too wide a body of water  
for a commando to cross alone. Because gentlemen  
never kiss and tell, and soldiers never share  
their kill count. Because you teach the meaning  
of words like ‘amorous’ and ‘varnish’ and ‘leave.’  

FICTIONLilypad Puppy-girlMeg Pokrass

FICTIONThe Deception of Ordinary ObjectsAshley PerezWriter of the Month
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