Poetry

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Five Poems – Richard Kenney

Thursday, June 29, 2017 12:18 — 0 Comments

Epistemology, Dude  He says beaucoup when he means a lot. I guess that means he’s polyglot. He talks a lot. His streak is blue. But I’m not sure it means beaucoup.   Poetaster in Paris Risible, he who at Le Cafe Haute-Coif gaffes: gazing absently at a graceful jeune fille feels the unnoticed soda-straw nick his nostril, steals a glance sideways, scanning for witnesses, nurses his drink, and subsides once more into nuance.   To Think While Doing a Hard Thing Is not always best. Still, he can’t help reflecting how once the grim wince came, climbing a rope hand […]

Poetry

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Two Poems – Graham Isaac

Thursday, June 29, 2017 12:11 — 0 Comments

Redirecting Limited Mental Space to Romanticizing the Current Situation We are teaching each other to make fists sowhen the time for punching comes,we don’t hurt ourselves.A poster ripped from a telephone pole orcovered with contradicting stickers. Reading up on railroads, both underground and for hopping. A lifetime of sweaty basements and darkened bars did surprisingly little to prepare us for guerilla warfare at the coffeeshop. Those phone calls to our representatives aren’t as glamorous, but we crush finger exercises and pop knuckles and shout solidarity with Princess Leia. A surprising number of people show up to the thing. Maybe it […]

Poetry

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Two Poems – Jacob Bennett

Monday, June 26, 2017 12:06 — 0 Comments

7th Grade If you start dressing like this for anything other than Halloween, we’re  gonna have to talk, she said, as she used a foreign brush on my aqua-blue eyelids. I stood up and faced my step-sister’s mirror – the one that had seen me so many times before in her thongs and robes while she was at cheerleading practice. I adjusted the hair tie on my left pig tail and smoothed out the socks stuffed in the polka-dot blouse I had so carefully chosen at Wal-Mart. Hoping to bring home bigger candy bars, my brother and I went to […]

Poetry

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Three Poems – Jeff Burt

Thursday, May 25, 2017 13:08 — 0 Comments

Sunflower I wanted you to know that I have read your rants, the scrawled graphite on torn pieces of newspaper, seen you pawing through loose papers like a bear over blueberries, your life in two soiled duffel bags dragged like cloth dolls, jotted demented phrases disconnected from each other and reality, euphoric exclamations about finding shoes at the bottom of your legs, socks to boot, these miniature ragged texts your Van Gogh self-portrait pouring out of an old dirty backpack. While others post on sites offering intimacy to a thousand connected friends you pin your scrap and scribbles on public […]

Poetry

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Jason Whitmarsh’s ‘The Histories’ out Friday

Monday, April 17, 2017 14:34 — 0 Comments

Jason Whitmarsh has been a Monarch favorite since the magazine’s first days. We just think he’s a swell guy. But, perhaps more importantly, we really dig his poetry. Check out this short one from his new book, The Histories, set to be released at Open Books in Seattle’s Wallingford neighborhood Friday (April 21) at 7 pm: HISTORY OF LOSS I keep having to count my brothers and sisters, now: M. and I. are one and two, C. and H. are three and four. And who is five? Oh, she was five. And who is six? Oh, I am six.   […]

Poetry

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Five Poems – Derek Graf

Sunday, April 2, 2017 12:03 — 1 Comment

IF ANYONE ASKS Drive, he said, pushing his dry fingers inside me, if anyone asks we went for a drive. My uncle ashes his cigarette on a dinner plate, pulls his wallet out of last night’s jeans. Every day I tell myself I will not become him. Drive, he said, throwing my blood-stained shorts in the trash, if anyone asks we went for a drive.     LINED UP I remember the row of dolls’ heads lined up on a shelf above a radio he played the whole time. I close my eyes, remember this in a dream, maybe, or […]

What am I?

Bioluminescent eye
That sees by the shine
Of its own light. Lies

Blind me. I am the seventh human sense
And my stepchild,
Consequence;

Scientists can't find me.

Januswise I make us men;
Glamour
Was my image then—

Remind me:

The awful fall up off all fours
From the forest
To the hours…

Tick, Tock: Divine me.

-- Richard Kenney

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Book Release and Reading Feb. 6

January 6th, 2016

Hello fellow readers, travelers and Monarchians! Our first book, Traveling Light, written by Seattle author, Jim Brantingham, is now for sale! And we will be throwing a release party for it Feb. 6 at 6pm in Ravenna Third Place Books (on the corner of 65th and 20th NE). Jim will be reading from the book and there will be guest readers accompanying him. Space is limited, so we suggest you come early. Books can be bought through this link here or at Ravenna Third Place Books (which just ordered it’s second wave of books). We are super excited for this release and […]