The Calf
D. James Smith
Child of a dying wind it lay
In the muck and hot, blond grass
Below the dam and its strangled creek
That my boyhood friend and I
Crossed that morning, determined
To flee the nun’s black habits and ink,
To claim ...
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...
Contours of the Irreal: Paintings by David de Biasio
Erik Noonan
Although it may strike a theorist as paradoxical, the artist’s sole response to a moment such as ours—with its ideological cowardice, its reflexive violence, its prurient spectatorship—is always to exult in using the m...
Code of Violence
Thaddeus Rutkowski
On the subway, I see a boy who is about 10 years old; he’s with his father. Both of them have red hair, but the boy has Asian features—a round face and pointy eyes. His father has a long face and Western eyes. Maybe this...
The Storm
Peter Blauner
He liked to have his house in order, which was why he’d never had a family or pets. He liked his routines and there was nothing wrong with that. Every day in the summer months, he wore his father’s old Fire Department wi...
Horse Track Portraits
Justin Clifford Rhody
I’ve been working on the Horse Track Portrait series almost every Sunday for three years now at the Golden Gate Fields horse track in Berkeley. All the photos are of anonymous people at the edge of the track fence during t...
Four Poems by Hal Sirowitz
Hal Sirowitz
Removing Her Boots
She took off
her boots and
said now she can
get down and dirty.
She got down
but before she
could get dirty,
she fell asleep.
Petting
She took me
to the petting zoo.
The only bad thing
...
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 ...
Mesrine
Jacques Mesrine (translated by Catherine Texier & Robert Greene)
In late February 1972, all my friends finally ended up in block 2. The winter was harsh. We had more than three feet of snow. Right away, Jean-Paul Mercier became a close friend. We saw eye to eye about everything. I knew he...
Backwards the Drowned Go Dreaming
Carl Watson
“Amongst the oil fumes and the briny dinge of the sea, greasy, tired, frustrated, I had a flash. Suddenly, I had it all figured out—the psychology of despots and CEOs. I figured that in order for civilization to exist, p...
“Body + Technology + Landscape” in Flame Schon’s INterzone
JC Gonzo
INterzone’s title text ascends in an expressive flair, setting an introductory tone for Flame Schon’s singular action expressed as a psychedelic video that expands straight documentation into a stylized, creatively i...
Best of Enemies – A Review
Franklin Mount
You're watching live television coverage of the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Outside of the convention hall, the Chicago police are clubbing demonstrators asking for peace. Inside the convention, on the ABC News set,...
The Night I Fucked My Alarm Clock
Charles Bukowski
starving in philadelphia
i had a small room
it was evening going into night
and i stood at my window on the 3rd floor
in the dark and looked down into a
kitchen across the way on the 2nd floor
and i saw a beautiful blo...
All This Life: A Novel by Joshua Mohr – A Review
Bernard Meisler
The cover illustration for Joshua Mohr's terrific new novel, All This Life, offers a clue—no, more than that, a cipher—to the book's heart. It's subtle and you might not notice it, or give it much thought on first blush,...
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...
