Book
Sensitive Skin Selected Writing 2016-2018
The Editors
Sensitive Skin Books is proud to present our first writing anthology, Sensitive Skin Selected Writing: 2016-2018, Our (once print, now online only) magazine has been described as "The New Yorker on acid," and "almost underground." For almost 30 years, it has featured writing, art and music by artists famous, infamous, unknown and breaking, everybody from William S. Burroughs to Richard Hell to John Lurie to Alex Katz to Eileen Myles to Gary Indiana.
For many (mostly obvious reasons), our final print issue was released in early 2016. But we thought it would be a valuable resource to collect some of our favorite writing from 2016 to 2018, because print, though more and more difficult to justify producing, is still - well, great.
This 306-page anthology, edited by Bernard Meisler, collects selected stories, poems and essays, published online between 2016 and 2018, so you can finally enjoy them in physical book (and Kindle - we ma...
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Story
Alphanumerica
Robert C. Hardin
The streets were numbered forward and the avenues backward, so that you began at H and walked until you reached the first letter. Then the next avenue, like the first street, began a forward count from one to two and so on....
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Essay
After the Ash-White Wind
Robert C. Hardin
9/11/01: 8:54 a.m.
My shift has ended and I’m sitting at my computer, finessing a letter to Swedish musician, Tomas Pettersson. Looking out of an eighteenth-story window off Maiden Lane, I notice what might have passed ...
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Poem
Prismed Autumn (an Imitation)
Robert C. Hardin
Prismed Autumn (an Imitation)
You who denigrate the Fall as nature’s end:
Have you beheld the brilliance of its dying?
It is not cloaked in mourning,
weighted by some sable hood,
but nakedly chromatic, varie...
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Review
Sensitive Skin Contributors 2016 Favorites – Books, Movies, TV, Art, Performance and Music – Reasons to Live
The Editors
Before we get on to the 2016 Favorites, first things first, I need to get this off my chest: Hey 2016 - go suck a bag of d***s, will ya?
OK, and now, without further ado, presented without rhyme or reason, here's our annu...
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What Not
Sensitive Skin 13 – Table of Contents
The Editors
Here's the complete list of all the pieces from our 13th issue, along with the back cover, a collage of mugshots from the collection of Mark Michaelson, submitted for your perusal. If you'd like to support us, please purchas...
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Story
Welcome to All the Pleasures
Robert C. Hardin
My father liked to say that I’d always been impossible to find. During birth, he recalled, I couldn’t be extracted with forceps. No one could see me, so I made my own way out of my mother. The midwife only located me aft...
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Art
Sensitive Skin 13
The Editors
Presenting Sensitive Skin 13, the Crime Special, featuring a multitude of criminally insane artists and writers.
Sensitive Skin 13 features original fiction from Peter Blauner (Slow Motion Riot, The Intruder), Thaddeus ...
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Sensitive Skin 13
B. Kold
Presenting the 13th edition of Sensitive Skin, the crime issue, featuring a multitude of criminally insane artists and writers.
Sensitive Skin 13 features original fiction from Peter Blauner (Slow Motion Riot, The Intrude...
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Essay
Drone Loops and the Signature of Bliss
Robert C. Hardin
The experience of bliss means different things to different people. For this frustratingly former arranger and studio keyboard player, euphoria is conditioned by the search for perfect sounds.
To me, bliss means the slow...
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Poem
For an Infant in the Throes of a Fatal Condition
Robert C. Hardin
Cirrhosis isn’t half as bad
As maladies you might have had.
A failing liver strains the muscles
But liberates the red corpuscles.
When voided kidneys soak one’s dollies,
Relief, like spasms, comes in volleys.
Rope-...
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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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Story
The Soul of the Doll
Robert C. Hardin
Being the Recollections of a Late Inmate (1931–1946) of the Dalmarnock Asylum for Children in Glasgow, Scotland
The eyes were what changed and flayed me above all else—the eyes or, rather, the doll’s eye...
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Dag-a-Man Leanty’s Dumpe1
Robert C. Hardin
(hav’ na byn compos’d by Byffe, Bairn an’ Nagel, nae dead a’ sea)2
Aie, nae, dance th’ auld dag-a-man leanty3
Er mae yer goggles a-cyrl,
An’ slag-a-mum4 dyne
On th’ bulgewark o’ thyne,
Wharfor’...
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