Writing Archives - Sensitive Skin Magazine

The Cowboy

James Reich

Here came a cowboy with sun-saddled skin. He had killed but once, but had killed simply, in Santa Fe where the turquoise tells. The cowboy was young with a jackrabbit’s poise, a buck-toothed boy, spring-heeled and dun. It ...

Everything Is Radiant Between the Hates – Poems by Rich Ferguson – Review

Kathleen Reichelt

Everything Is Radiant Between the Hates Poems by Rich Ferguson Moon Tide Press In his newest book of poetry Rich Ferguson promises a puzzle. Or according to the poet, collaborations “with clouds creating poems continuously changing shape & meaning, depending how you look at them”. Rich doesn’t disappoint. Everything Is Radiant Between the Hates, published by Moon Tide Press and released in January 2021, delivers this and more. Everything Is Radiant Between the Hates, poems by Rich Ferguson In the eight section book, Rich Ferguson begins his lunar journey with relationships that end. When Rich addresses the tear from his mother who handed me over to the brass-knuckled moon in “A Worry Bead, a Blessing” and the amnesiac moon, a lunatic laundromat robbing me of my quarters in “When Her Blood-Red Kiss Stains My Breath”, he isn’t mixing his metaphors. The theme of moon repeats throughout this book, carefully...

Painted Silence: Visual Metaphysics

Yuko Otomo

dedicated to Franck André Jamme (21 nov 1947 – 1 oct 2020) 16. Marvelously anonymous. Like an antidote. Or a balm. 26. … The lighter, the purer… 37. Abstraction. To abbreviate. To see it all, finally ...

IN THE REBEL CAFE: Interviews with Ed Sanders – Review

Marc Olmsted

IN THE REBEL CAFE Interviews with Ed Sanders edited by Jennie Skerl Clemson University Press $120.00 Jennie Skerl has put together a magnificent intro/crash course to Ed Sanders, "second generation" Beat. Sanders, to many of us, needs no introduction, but he is not the household name that many of the "first generation" are. Further complexity involving appreciation of Sanders is how many angles one can know him from. Many are more aware of his band The Fugs. Perhaps one read The Family in one of its revisions, Sanders' journalistic exploration of Charles Manson, (and among the absolute best of the true crime genre). Finally, one may know him poetically, and in particular, through his "investigative poetics" - journalistic, historical, data-collecting poetics, a refinement and extension of the political "list" poetry of Allen Ginsberg such as "CIA Dope Calypso," which arguably has its own musical influence from Th...

Blackouts Are Beautiful

Charles March III

These addiction/mental health medical note erasures are a cathartic attempt to creatively find the joy and humor in the absurdity of all of life’s ridiculousness. On the Cover of Seventeen Puff, Puff, Pass ...

Mermaids Are People Too

bart plantenga

“That happens to be nothing less than a mermaid. An authentic, flesh & blood mermaid.” —William Powell, Mr. Peabody & the Mermaid Bikini Girl requested – demanded! – that I show up at the Monkey Bar in a...

Words Doing as They Want to Do and Have to Do by Eve Fowler – Review

John Pietaro

Eve Fowler, Words Doing as They Want to Do and Have to Do (Radical Documents, 2020) Speakers: Litia Perta, Rachelle Sawatsky, Celeste Dupoy-Spencer, Bobby Jablonski, Kate Hall, Dylan Mira and Jess Arndt. Recorded by Sam S...

November Again

Peter Bushyeager

It’s November and there’s a steady stream without stagnation or scum as glitter resurfaces in the trash mound political races raise fear and candidates come clean about dark money cast into shady corners. Po...

Assembling the American Uncanny – Interview with Shannon Cartier Lucy

Marian St. Laurent

Marian St. Laurent and artist Shannon Cartier Lucy discuss the unexpected ecstasies of disorder The last time Shannon Cartier Lucy and I crossed paths was in the Lower East Side of New York City over twenty years ago, ...

Painting

Broadway for Paul by Vincent Katz – Review

Greg Masters

Broadway for Paul by Vincent Katz Knopf $27 Often matter-of-fact in tone, stripped of rococo embellishment or flowery pretense, these poem-objects by poet, art writer and translator Vincent Katz stand as testimony to keen observance and thoughtful assessment. The voice is conversational, as if the poet and reader were seated at an outdoor café sharing a pot of good coffee sheltered for the moment from the rush of activity and liberated from destination. I felt charged tuning into the, at times, seemingly spontaneous improvisation, the poet boldly applying pen to paper as his thought stream issues forth, one observance noted down which then spawns a reflection, the thought allowed to move where it may as quick as a sax solo; for instance, catching the delight in a woman smiling at a baby on the subway. The observations are coralled into form, the passion of the personal journalism contained in the poems' elegant structure. T...

The Masque of the Red Death

Edgar Allan Poe

The red death had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal -- the madness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and ...

Mac Davis & Christmas Crime in Beverly Hills

Suzi Kaplan Olmsted

Mac Davis died today He wrote music for Elvis, or something I was a terrible flute player I'm not sure if I remember it correctly I'm not sure why my memories are so fuzzy about it, either I was having some bouts of ...

Excerpt from PANDEMIC DIARY

Wanda Phipps

Thursday, September 17, 2020 slo-mo melting images in my brain dali does a cartwheel california’s burning orange skies smoke wired through clouds do I hear fireworks In the middle of the night in new york or ...

A Translator’s Fare thee well!
In Memoriam Steve Dalachinsky (1946-2019)

Jürgen Schneider

You didn't want to be called a poet that's what you once said: I am a tree without roots fixed in its wanderings a misplaced garden of endless possibilities. What I’ve done for the better part of my life besides comp...

Beat Scrapbook by Gerald Nicosia – Review

Jim Feast

Gerald Nicosia, Beat Scrapbook (Brooklyn: Coolgrove Press, 2020) 113 pages, $19.95 Gerald Nicosia has dedicated all his nonfiction books to describing those who, through whatever means, fought for the underdogs. His biography of Kerouac, the finest we have, Memory Babe, describes how the Beat author, himself from the lower class, in all his writings showed his sympathy for the downtrodden, whether it be city hustlers, Mexican street walkers or those who rode the boxcars with him as he traveled the country. In fact, one of the most developed points in Memory Babe is Nicosia’s bringing out that Kerouac’s greatness as a writer is closely tied to his far-reaching humanity. Then Nicosia turned to the Vietnam vets. In his Home to War, he left indelible portraits of activists, such as Ron Kovic, who denounced the war and the shabby treatment of vets, particularly, in later years, by battling the VA and the government who long denied t...