Essay
Excerpt From Lollapalooza Tour Diaries
Maggie Estep
Wed. August 24th, 1994, Phoenix, AZ.
It's 120 degrees here and the sky is huge. In spite of the heat they seem to be big on poetry in Phoenix. I read 4 poems then almost passed out from the heat. My t shirt was soaked ...
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Story
Gizmo
Gary Indiana
(from Gristle Springs, a novel of intrigue)
In a detention cell at Gizmo, Umma Obikhan Khan, supposedly blind as the proverbial bat (having dwelt in many caves, the Umma knew well that bats are not at all blind, but simp...
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Writing
William S. Burroughs: Interview
Allen Ginsberg
Editor’s Note: Circa 1995, one of the editors of the original Sensitive Skin, Mr. E. Oso, handed me the following manuscript, an interview with William S. Burroughs, in turn given to him by an assistant to Allen Ginsberg, ...
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Story
Chapter 90 – Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders
Samuel R. Delaney
Note: Inadvertently, Chapter [90] was left out of the printed version of the new novel by Samuel R. Delany, Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders. Insert it on Page 956. What is now numbered Chapter [90] becomes [91]; [9...
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Photographs
Wall Street – Charles Gatewood Photographs
Charles Gatewood
In early 1972, I spent a week with William Burroughs in London, photographing a cover story for Rolling Stone. Burroughs' radical ideas about power, control, and money touched me deeply. When I returned to New York, I bega...
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Poem
Mayakovsky – New Translations
Jenny Wade
Маяковский в 1913 году
Я тебя в твоей не знала славе,
Помню только бурный твой рассвет,
Но, быть может, я сегодня впра...
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Interview
Fred Frith – An Interview
The Editors
Three Sensitive Skin editors—Fluffy Schwartz, B. Kold and Sir Reginald Brathwaite—had a chat with legendary musician and composer Fred Frith. We asked him some good questions, and some (or so he apparently thought) pedan...
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Essay
The Extremist Manifesto
Nick Zedd
Now that contemporary art, a system that stands for privilege, nepotism and political connections is finally dying, get out of the fucking way.
We who have been locked out of your galleries, museums and art holes... ignor...
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Poem
Time Now and Everything
Michael Randall
other nights I’ve heard it
just outside the window
fluttering in the dark, waiting
now I’m not convinced
the heart fails the spirit
sputters
all voices silent then choral music
on the radio quiet at first
b...
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Classics
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
James Joyce
Chapter One
Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo
His father told him t...
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Essay
Memory is Narrative; Narrative is Memory
Ronald B. Richardson
Memory is Narrative
Memory is mostly narrative. I say mostly because there are rare memories that are not, such as olfactory memories: you smell something, and it suddenly takes you back to . . . what? In these memories, ...
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Story
Purple Heron of the Night
Raúl Serrano Sánchez
Claudio was only trying to make up for all the years he’d spent yearning for those legs, the ones he was always telling you about over coffee in the newly restored center of the old city, in one of those bars that’s supp...
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Poem
The Good Shit & Presence: Rue Girardon
Pete Simonelli
The Good Shit
We were told the bubbles should look like little pebbles you could pour clean into your hand.
“Go on, shake it,”
said Peanut, junk dealer, mechanic, and feral-cat wrangler by day,
shiner by night.
�...
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Story
The Cherub
E. A. Fow
On the way to rehearsal, Amy thought she saw something flit away. An afterimage lingered in her eye, pink and faintly glowing, but she couldn’t make out what it was. She didn’t think about it again until the next day, wh...
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Essay
Catastrophes
Breyten Breytenback
No, the universe remains dark. We are animals overcome by catastrophes . . . but I suddenly discovered that alienation, the exploitation of man by man, and malnourishment, will push into the background the metaphysical evil,...
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