Music
Suicide Tour
Marty Thau
Suicide, the seminally important and confrontational duo consisting of vocalist Alan Vega and electronic musician Martin Rev, formed in 1970 and have been active intermittently since that time. Marty Thau, founder of Red Sta...
More...
Poem
My Heart Is A Wiffle Ball Freedom Pole of Rumpleforeskin — for Kristen Stewart
Sharon Mesmer
My Heart Is A Wiffle Ball Freedom Pole of Rumpleforeskin
-- for Kristen Stewart
I reared your monkey penis sausage
You read my poetry at the nighttime elf race
Then scrawled neon squid across the horny thighs of ...
More...
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 ...
More...
Review
Mother’s Worry by Chris D. – Review
Marc Olmsted
Chris D. (aka Desjardins) first came to my attention as a published poet in the obscure but excellent zine Birthstone and with his own anthology Bongo Chalice, both in 1977, minutes away from starting his Flesh Eaters band ...
More...
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...
More...
Art
Zona Norte – Photographs
Chris Bava
Click any image to launch the full-size slide show.
Arriving in Tijuana after over a decade of heroin abuse in a past life, I felt the garish lights of Tijuana’s zona de tolerancia, or North Zone, beckoning. I was f...
More...
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, ...
More...
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...
More...
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...
More...
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...
More...
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...
More...
Review
Jody Weiner, Prisoners of Truth – Review
Jim Feast
Jody Weiner, Prisoners of Truth
(San Francisco: Council Oak Books, 2012)
Jody Weiner’s Prisoners of Truth follows a pattern found in much American writing and, perhaps even more, in classical Hollywood cinema. Two men...
More...
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...
More...
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...
More...