Writing Archives - Sensitive Skin Magazine

Oh Shit

Ben Roth

This is the story of how a bookstore briefly became a shrine. But it doesn’t go the way you think. Listen and wonder at the tale I have to tell. Nothing in this world had prepared him for what he found that afternoon ...

Fruit and other poems

Rebecca Weiner Tompkins

FRUIT In this season of persimmons and pears when things turn quickly and just go, I mourn the almost being, as much as the done. You, like the animal who shows me his beautiful teeth— but then you, who slinks away...

Penis Extensions

Ron Kolm

Warfare has always been About extending your will Further than your enemies. Stones, spears and bows and arrows Were all used in fornication. Then crossbows, muskets, Cannons and bombs were invented To fuck with the m...

Peckerwood Blues

Ray Jicha

My cousin Jubal kicked me out after a week and I had to hitchhike back to Carolina to face Mama, hat in hand. It took me all day to get up to Shreveport, but then I caught a break. A rusty Datsun pickup rolled up and I threw...

Olivia Wilde & other poems about women filmmakers

John S. Hall

Poem No. 1584 ("Olivia Wilde") I'm going to see The new Olivia Wilde movie I don't give a shit When people Trash a movie They have seen Unless they have good reasons And I care even less When people Trash a movie...

HIGH WHITE NOTES—The Rise and Fall of Gonzo Journalism—Review

Marc Olmsted

HIGH WHITE NOTES The Rise and Fall of Gonzo Journalism By David S. Wills Beatdom Books $17.99 High White Notes takes a phrase from F. Scott Fitzgerald that was of prime importance to Hunter S. Thompson (or any serious writer) - being in the zone while creating. It is of course important to all artists to be in that zone, and thus David Wills uses Thompson’s writing exclusively (rather than a more conventional biography) to get to the man and his self-created myth, one far more invented than I previously realized. Most of us enthusiastic about Thompson agree that Hell’s Angels, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, and Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 are his “high white notes” - and anyone attempting to follow and understand him can see that there is a deterioration in his work from that point - relatively slow enough to entice us back momentarily (I used to regularly pick up the San Francisco Examiner ju...

The Methadonians

Nelson Loskamp

I sat every day perched high above the northeast corner of Canal and Allen in my painting studio in New York, mostly not painting. Down below was a tree-lined stretch of median called the Allen Malls. Worn by the wind, weath...

Nobody Reads Mailer Anymore

Frank Richards

Things were different in those days. Back in the nineties, my international business meetings were face-to-face rather than screen-to-screen. I spent a lot of time in the air. Sometimes I felt like one of those big sea birds...

We Come, We Go

Lenny Levine

“Thank you, New York!” Justin Howitzer stood bathed in spotlights, his right fist raised aloft, his left hand idly tracing patterns on the fingerboard of his Stratocaster, as if impatient to begin the last song of t...

Anarchy At The Circle K – excerpt

Patrick O'Neil

ANARCHY AT THE CIRCLE K On the road with Dead Kennedys, TSOL, Flipper, Subhumans and...HEROIN A memoir by Patrick O'Neil Punk Hostage Press, 2022 By 10pm I’ve yet to meet anyone that says they’re in charge. I had t...

The Slop

J. Boyett

He spat his toothpaste into the sink, rinsed his mouth, then as he straightened saw himself in the mirror and froze. Yesterday he’d been in a public bathroom with mirrors mounted on all the walls, which had given him the c...

The Peacock Feathers and 3 other poems

James Reich

The Peacock Feathers Whose eyes fanned evil from the house, petrol Blue at the edge of green, the lapis on the lawn Of the Raj, now we drink tea at summer’s end In a pinched house where a man has died, you’re So...

CBGBs

Ron Kolm

I worked in the Strand bookstore with Tom Verlaine. He invited me to CBGBs the first time his band, Television, played there. Punk was born that night. I ended up getting into a fight with my date and we left ...

THE END OF THE WORLD

Peter Dolack

We interrupt this program to bring you this special bulletin Two automated observatories inside the orbit of Mercury Have now confirmed the news The Sun is going nova All life on Earth will be extinguished in eight minut...

Jacket Weather by Mike DeCapite – Review

Greg Masters

JACKET WEATHER Mike DeCapite Soft Skull Press, New York City, 2021, 258 pages, $16.95 Senses attuned walking through the city: the crispness of the sounds, the grittiness of the incongruous assembly of buildings and storefronts, the light effects, the pedestrians mired in their moment, even the smells; plugged into the cacophony for the solo passage through the grid, each element contributing to a choral totality that in Mike DeCapite's hand streams forth like clear whitewater, without decoration, without a superfluous syllable. In fact, a strong, residual effect of this novel comes from what is not present. Not to give away too much, but the narrative is on its own track, so far away from mainstream formula. The delight of not being absorbed into what most art douses us with every day results in a therapeutic wash. How can a book be so full of love without irony or conflict? He does it. While there is story-telling going...