A Glance Like Flashing Lightning
Marc Olmsted
"Homage! Tara, swift, heroic!" - Chapter III, Tara Tantra
Facebook cyber-chat filled with bad
news and petitions
My answer to depression is
sleep and caffeine, whichever works first
Still. I shake off the blue...
The Twilight of Freedom, a poem by Osip Mandelstam
Jenny Wade
Let us praise, brothers, freedom’s twilight,
The great diminishing year!
A heavy forest of nets is lowered
Into the turbulent waters of night.
You are ascending in desolate years,
Oh sun, judge, people.
Let us prai...
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...
A Junkie’s Christmas
Vincent Zangrillo
Okay, you’re right. I am sitting by a pool in the sub-tropical Florida sun, not too far from West Palm Beach, and it is the middle of August, so hot that just lifting a drink makes you sweat. But this is, I assure you, a s...
A Christmas Miracle, Sort Of…
Ron Kolm
It’s a cold morning, two weeks before Christmas, and I’m walking across 57th street on my way to work when I noticed him up ahead, shuffling along the curb -- silver hair, blue jacket and white sneakers – not dressed f...
Three Poems by George Wallace
George Wallace
These three poems will appear in George Wallace's latest book, "Shadow of the Slow Decline" (Blue Light Press, SF Ca), scheduled for release in the spring of 2017.
SHE LIVES IN A LITTLE PLACE OF BOATS
Like a...
NY Sin Phoney in Face Flat Minor
bart plantenga
The Unloaded Camera Snapshots were initiated as a response to the condition that occurs when we’ve lived somewhere for a while; live anywhere long enough & we begin to show signs of sensory overload. In order to survive we...
The Rise, The Fall, and Rise Again – A Review of the Memoir by Brix Smith
JC Gonzo
‘BRIXTON IS GOD’ proclaimed graffiti scrawled in a boys’ bathroom at Bennington College, discovered by a young Brix (formerly Laura Salenger) who’d just completed her first gig. This prophetic moment for the burgeoni...
Once Upon a Time in the East Village
Jim Feast
Clarissa felt as if she had gone from starving on a diet of bread and water to gorging on a bountiful smorgasbord. In Oblong, where she grew up, any glimmerings of culture were hard to discern. Her one friend in school, a f...
The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, Photographs by Nan Goldin – Review
Franklin Mount
The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, Photographs by Nan Goldin
At The Museum of Modern Art, New York, through February 12, 2017
Downtown New York in the late Seventies and early Eighties looms larger than ever in public imag...
Killing the Dogs of Kathmandu
Jason DeBoer
Killing the Dogs of Kathmandu, by Jason DeBoer
An excerpt from Annihilation Songs: Three Shakespeare Reintegrations, available now from Stalking Horse Press
Editor's Note: This is one of the more interesting pieces that...
The Swimmer
Liza Béar
New York, July 1 2016. We’d arranged to meet in the lobby of her hotel, a newfangled glass & steel construction with river views and sports facilities. Seated with chin propped on fist, almost in a Rodin Le Penseur pose, w...
Dr. B. Said
Larissa Shmailo
As I contemplate my treatment by the psychiatrist J. B. M.D. over a span of twenty years, I recall some of the things the good doctor said and did.
Dr. B. of Connecticut, of the upper classes.
Who carried bedpans as an...
Two Poems by Stephen Berk
Stephen Berk
The Family Tree
To all the sons and all the daughters of all the mothers and all the fathers who blessed their children with the demons that drove them to greatness:
Happy Mother’s Day Mother, this two-dollar gift ca...
The End of The World
Vincent Zangrillo
New York City—8/8/84—Day to Night
Mark wanted to see how fast he could burn through the 10,000 dollar inheritance from Grandpa Dave, who sold schmatta to Hendrix on St Marks, and who despite his gnomic wisd...
