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Sensitive Skin Beer Virus Reading #2

The Editors

A virtual reading presented by Sensitive Skin Magazine, on April 2nd, 2020, featuring: - John J. Trause (New Jersey) - Marguerite Van Cook (New York) - Rich Ferguson (LA) - Bonny Finberg (New York) - Erika Schickel (LA)...

Sensitive Skin Beer Virus Reading #1

The Editors

Sorry, no April Poetry Month this year - but we've still got plenty of poetry coming your way (and prose too!). We'll be running virtual online readings for the duration of the shelter-in-place order (so...September 2021?). ...

Have a Seat

Richard Charles Schaefer

What do banal pricks dream about? You know the type; if he’s not your boss, he’s your boss’s boss, your father, or your stepfather. He exerts influence over some part of your life, and it’s not unreasonable to wonder...

Me and Neil

Joe McAvoy

There was a time from around 1971 to … well … now, I guess, when I was rather obsessed with a singer/songwriter from our great neighbor-nation to the north. Some who knew me in the seventies—I grew more discreet over t...

SOUTH AMERICAN JOURNALS January – July 1960 by Allen Ginsberg – review

Marc Olmsted

SOUTH AMERICAN JOURNALS January - July 1960 by Allen Ginsberg edited by Michael Schumacher University of Minnesota Press $29.95 First, I was immediately struck by how much unpublished poetry or early drafts (such as "Aether" and "Magic Psalm") are contained in this volume - far beyond any previous journal publications of Allen Ginsberg. In fact, he mostly wrote his journal as poetry during this period. Granted much is not A-list material, as Allen correctly understood in not publishing a lot of it. But for earnest scholars and fans, it is a gold mine. There are also amazing little notations of events, such as seeing Montgomery Clift's "Raintree County" ("he too looks sad" - in fact, Monty's face-rearranging car crash occurred in the middle of filming that picture). Likewise a long dream about Marlon Brando, who imitates Jack Kerouac's voice at one point(!) and includes a dream discussion of how great Orson Welles' Magn...

Intersection

Bari Lynn Hein

I come here every Friday. Same time – between three and three thirty, before rush hour. No one knows I come. In the summer it was easy to gather the dead flowers from the week before; all I had to do was snap their dry ...

The Liver of a Beagle

Ann Levin

If I hadn’t known before, then I knew on the plane. Everything was different. It was the first time I could remember that I wasn’t afraid of flying. I couldn’t drink, but I didn’t want to. I didn’t even need the al...

S02E14 – Keshav Das

Bernard Meisler

Writer, poet and musician Keshav Das in conversation with Bernard Meisler. Keshav Das Keshav Das, was, once upon a time, an editor at Sensitive Skin magazine, when he went by the nom de plume Christian X. Hunter. He ...

Dig

Ellen Pober Rittberg

People without teeth depress me. Is that wrong, wrong-headed as does the lady in the subway cleaving to her whoever-he-is-husband boyfriend lover eyes almost closed unseeing is she blind is she foreign I mean Sca...

S02E13 – Sharon Mesmer

Bernard Meisler

Poet and teacher Sharon Mesmer in conversation with Bernard Meisler. photograph of Sharon Mesmer by Ester Levine I always enjoy speaking with the great Sharon Mesmer, one of my favorite poets and/or people! We ...

Uncle Skallywag by Shiv Mirabito – Review

Andy Clausen & Pamela Twining

The poet carries the Universe on his shoulders (p 20). Thus, Shiv Mirabito, in his beautiful and provocative new book, Uncle Skallywag, published by Shivastan Press in Kathmandu, Nepal, on handmade paper, leaps bravely into the fray - outsider art, renegade artists, poems and poets gone before, Ginsberg, Ira Cohen, Janine Pommy Vega, Corso, and many others. This book is a nifty sweep of poetry influenced by Whitman, the Beats, Buddhism, Anthropological travel, thousands of movies, and rock n roll. Let’s peruse some of them. AMERICAN VALUES, sharply satirical, is all about freedom becoming synonymous with amassing money and adoration of Self. “I know I am the crown of creation I have dominion over all that I see I am totally sure because I saw it on TV” (p13) The eponymous UNCLE SKALLYWAG defines, outlines, and reinforces the fiercely compassionate persona of Skallywag, the friendly Outsider, the goodhear...

Max Sees Red by Martha King – Review

Jim Feast

Martha King, Max Sees Red (New York: Spuyten Duvvil, 2019) One of the greatest mysteries of Martha King’s brilliant new novel Max Sees Red does not appear in the narrative itself but in the author’s bio at the end. It reads, “Martha King has never lived in the Hudson Valley or in Soho where this story takes place.” The mystery is that this story, set in those two locales in 1978, paints such a vivid and detailed portrait, one with the ring of authenticity, so that until hitting this end note the reader thinks the author is using materials drawn from her own life. For instance, look at this this sharply etched description of the changing face of Hudson Valley: As Max turned the car from the parkway … he noticed the contrast between the first two houses [he saw]. The nearest … was roofed with rusted tin. Its wooden sides were faced with odd sections of black tar paper, and shiny greenish vinyl. .. The next ho...

S02E11 – J. Macon King

Bernard Meisler

Novelist, poet and publisher J. Macon King in conversation with Bernard Meisler. I met J. Macon King last spring, when he sent in a short story I liked - he thought I lived in NYC, but to his surprise, we both lived ...

What Life Dictates

Peter Wortsman

New neighbors. The walls are thin. The mole on her chin makes it safe to fantasize, or so I think. “I’m Crowley,” she says, “that’s Jim.” Jim the Psycho gives me a look that says: I’ll kill you if I ca...

S02E10 – bart plantenga

Bernard Meisler

Novelist and essayist bart plantenga in conversation with Bernard Meisler. Amsterdam-based bart plantenga is a novelist and essayist (PARIS SCRATCH, NY SIN PHONEY) and one of the co-founders of the Unbearables lite...