Classics
The Metamorphosis
Franz Kafka
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see ...
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Writing
Herbert Huncke: Letter to Dad
Herbert Huncke
Editor’s Note: This letter from Herbert Huncke to his Dad was first published in Peau Sensible, the print precursor to Sensitive Skin, in the summer of 1992. The issue also contained work by Joel Rose, Jack Micheline, Dari...
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Essay
Beer Mystic Burp #18: The Long Windy Road to a Closed Bar
bart plantenga
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqEeL1QzGsc
BEER MYSTIC: Read Beer Drink Novel: I thought by serving words in the name of beer & side effect mysticism would be repaid in not only the enchantment of words & the jo...
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Classics
The Veldt
Ray Bradbury
"George, I wish you'd look at the nursery.""What's wrong with it?""I don't know.""Well, then.""I just want you to look at it, is all, or call a psychologist in to
look at it.""What would a psychologist want with a nurser...
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Story
The Nose
Nikolai Gogol
Part I
On 25 March an unusually strange event occurred in St. Petersburg. For that morning Barber Ivan Yakovlevitch, a dweller on the Voznesensky Prospekt (his family name is lost now—it no longer figures on a signbo...
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Essay
THE THIRLWELL EFFECT
Díre McCain
Genuine virtuosos are a rare breed. They defy categorization simply by existing. Their visionary ingenuity radiates from their work in spades, and effortlessly so. It can come at a price, in terms of their creations being lo...
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Photographs
Punk Photographs
Ruby Ray
In the 1980s, through the early ’90s, I spent an awful lot of time travelling. Or maybe not travelling so much as running away. I was running away from this guy, this crazy guy who wanted to kill me. Finally, I realize...
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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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Story
Sick Lazy Fuck
Mark McCawley
“If you look a dog in the eye too intently, it may recite an astounding poem to you. You might have been mad for a long time and have realized it only at that moment.”
—Jean Genet, Funeral Rites
Si...
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Story
Guy Walks into a Bar circa 1997, Hollywood
Karen Lillis
So this guy walks into the bar last Thursday, and he sorta “lets it slip” that he’s Lawnchair Larry. This older guy, you know? He says it to me right before I’m gonna tell him what he owes me for a light draft. I...
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Art
Another Green World, A Painting by Justine Frischmann
Justine Frischmann
Another Green World, a painting by Justine Frischmann, from the back cover of Sensitive Skin #8.
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Art
Tom McGlynn—New Work, 2008–2012
Tom McGlynn
The term "social sculpture" is most readily identified with the German conceptual artist Josef Beuys, who has said: “an enlarged understanding of art could work and could break through the borders of isolation which th...
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Notes from a Woman Soon to Be Divorced
Su Byron
DECEMBER
Endless South
I woke up and saw that it was winter. There were no birds, etc. Every piece of clothing inside my house was clean. Thank God. I looked into the mirror and saw that my eye was bright and b...
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Story
The Battle of Skinner Butte
Ray Jicha
Moving north from San Francisco I slept on the beach near Arcata then made my way to Eugene where I got dropped off around 10:00 p.m. I found a little downtown bar, ordered a draft to pay for the stool and washed down t...
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Two Poems
William Lessard
Paul Kelly
First time I saw you
you were riding
a stolen motorcycle
down the middle
of our baseball field,
the cops in hot pursuit.
Last time I saw you
...
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