Poem
Grass
J. D. King
(i love the scent
of fresh cut grass)
the mower is black
mostly
with bright orange
parts
illustration by JD King
no engine
to cut is to hear
the whir
of the reel
and to smell fresh cut
gra...
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Poem
(10.1.13 will never come again.)
Bonny Finberg
Take the gas mask off. Take a bath.
Take the cake. Take the China exit.
Hell is out there too,
Other people’s concern,
Gods’ voices, at it like grownups
In the front seat.
Photograph from the Wall Str...
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Art
Owls
John S. Hall
by This Fuckin' Guy (as told to John S. Hall)
Owls don’t seem so fucking wise to me.
They look like dicks, usually,
With their chests all puffed out and shit,
Like they’re saying
“Fuck me? No--fuck you!”
But ...
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Comics
William S. Burroughs, Nancy Comics and the Cut-Up Method
Bernard Meisler
Nancy, the iconic series of graphic tone poems by the legendary Ernie Bushmiller, achieved landmark status not for its dada-esque art, its stark depiction of a near-barren (yet strangely psychedelic) landscape populated by p...
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Art
The Open Solitudes of a Plural Self: Joseph O’Neal on Painting
Erik Noonan
Quite apart from the circumstantial affiliations that normally obtain among contemporaries, and quite apart from the facile optical resemblances that one can discern among artworks across distances in time, looking at a pain...
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Classics
William S. Burroughs Fan Letter to Truman Capote, 1970
William S. Burroughs
Truman Capote once famously said of the work of Jack Kerouac: "That's not writing, that's typing." A decade or so later, William S. Burroughs returned the favor with this epistolary riposte.
July 23, 1970
My Dear Mr. T...
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Art
Sensitive Skin Most Best of 2014 More Favorites or Whenever
The Editors
I thought it would be fun to ask some Sensitive Skin editors and contributors what they thought was the best of 2014 - not necessarily the "best of" the year—what they liked best during the year, whenever it came out. So I...
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Evergreen
The “I Love Everbody” Tour Diaries
Maggie Estep
Last year, shortly after Maggie's passing, we published part one of her tour diaries. Here's part two of her adventures with Hole, The Beastie Boys and more, from Sensitive Skin Number 11, which we dedicated to Maggie.
Oc...
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Poem
on the b-38
steve dalachinsky
on the b-38
what are you waiting for / get covered / start here /
a gift of happiness or risky listening?
ya never can tell / drivin 26 yrs / 47 / nice humble guy
surprised / caught a heart attack / here today gone t...
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Story
Lambs to the Laughter
Anonymous
I have the kind of mind that would kill me if it didn’t need me for transportation.
In this case to Ireland.
I had no conscious desire to go anywhere near the place but somehow I found myself sucked into the subway,...
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Story
Afro-Surreal Excerpt
D. Scot Miller
Let me tell you how I met Sham Black.
West Virginia, Dunbar Jr. High School football field, 123rd Annual Commode Bowl, Riverside Rats versus The Hillside Rams.
photograph by Kym Ghee
Every Thanksgiving morning...
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Story
The Year of Our Lord Quetzalcoatl
Margarita Shalina
The morning of the first day in the Dark Zone, I wake, still dreaming in black and white. I am Joan Crawford. I am Mildred Pierce. In the black of night, a storm is raging. I am in a bungalow by the ocean. The white foam wav...
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Poem
Plants at Work
Lynn McGee
Plants at Work
Sunflowers bob on a raft near Chernobyl,
roots leaching atoms humming with intent
to harm, but diffusing like sugar in the slow
surge of some big flower’s stalk,
its face tilting to follow the s...
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Poem
Two Poems by Rebecca Weiner Tompkins
Rebecca Weiner Tompkins
AFTER YOU SAID I ALWAYS LOSE THINGS
The red birthstone fell
out of my ring, leaving
its crowned prongs empty,
a perfect chip chiseled
from my heart’s bones.
I dreamed being stopped by
the long dark walkway
w...
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Essay
Vladislav Khodasevich: Midlife Meltdown in Paris
Jenny Wade
During the unusually hot Parisian summer of 1924, 38-year-old Vladislav Khodasevich—regarded by Nabokov as the finest Russian poet since Blok—was suffering from an identity crisis. One of 3 million exiled from Soviet Rus...
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