Sensitive Skin Magazine - Page 53 of 58 - art, stories, poetry, essays, reviews and music

Don’t Feed the Crackheads

Melissa Febos

Tay Tay was my first friend in Bed Stuy. She stole my money, nearly got me kicked out of my apartment, and ultimately exposed the depth of my self-delusion, but she stuck around. Tay Tay, she was like glue. Let me explain...

Ruby, My Dear

Jose Padua

I could write a poem about Thelonius Monk by saying how he bent notes, or how Uri Geller bent spoons, how his jagged rhythms took you by surprise, how it’s hard to believe these phrases, or by tryin...

Crazy Girls

Jonathan Shaw

Rock bottom in America. Sitting in a third-rate L.A. titty bar on a rainy winter night a few days before this Christmas of the Apocalypse. "What the fuck in Jesus's underwear am I doing in this wretched hell pit, sitti...

South Park season 15 premiere – The HUMAN CENTiPAD

Sir Andre Bemler

I haven't watched South Park on any kind of regular basis for years. But Matt and Trey still got it - the ability to create cogent and acerbic social commentary that at the same time is revolting and juvenile. Yay! So - how ...

Letter From Santee

City Of Strangers

If we ever colonize Mars, our settlements will look a lot like Santee Town Center. The heart of Santee, CA, on San Diego’s eastern edge, is a series of interlocking strip malls, the big box monster kind, abutted with...

Billy Bang, R.I.P.

Bernard Meisler

Billy Bang, the great jazz violinist, moved on to the next plane, April 11, 2011. When I first came to New York, in the early 80s, Bang was the man in the LES jazz scene. Bang was born in Alabama as Billy Walker, but as a...

The Sensitive Skin Guide to Daikaiju Eiga (Japanese Giant Monster Movies)

Bernard Meisler

Oh no! There goes Tokyo! -Blue Oyster Cult Japan's problems seem to get worse every day. First the earthquake, then the tsunami, then Ernst Blofeld's secret volcano lair blew up again and to top it all off, a horrific ra...

Dock Ellis and the LSD No-Hitter

Bernard Meisler

On June 12, 1970, Dock Ellis, a pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates, accomplished what is perhaps the single greatest achievement in the history of sports - he pitched a no-hitter while under the influence of LSD. Apparently ...

The Beer Mystic’s Last Day on the Planet

bart plantenga

previous Beer Mystic Excerpt #43: BLACK BILE PRESS [Ottowa] Furman Pivo believes he [plus beer] may be the cause of a rash of streetlight outages. This sense of empowerment transforms him into the Beer Mystic. He has ...

Words for My Mother’s Funeral

Robert C. Hardin

Her loveliness grew to encompass her gentleness as the span of Heaven is multiplied by the depth of its city of souls. Leah Hardin was a woman who treasured her family above all else. Long after desire and ambition had be...

Introduction to The Bricklyn Project

Tim Hall

Abstract: A funding proposal to photograph all the bricks in Brooklyn. Introduction: Do you know many bricks were used to build your house, your neighborhood, your city? Does anybody know? If not, why not? These are some ...

A Tale of an Affair

Carl Watson

An excerpt from Backwards the Drowned Go Dreaming now available at Amazon Sometimes the speed works for you. Sometimes you’re left behind. The latter is my usual state. It was the early 1980s, West Lakeview. Subtle ...

The Bucket O’ Crabs

Jill Rapaport

I was scrunched up tight against Mike and Elvin; we made a gaping trinity off the noses of which Esmee purveyed her shining but misguided Wagnerian fantasies. Her father, like the fathers of more socially assured characters,...

Guns and Ohm

Don Rock

This is a scan of the rear cover of Sensitive Skin #2, from the summer of 1994, by Don Rock. We'll be publishing PDF versions of the original magazine in the near future. Click the image to see the full-sized version - yo...

The Collector

Ron Kolm

I’m a collector. I hunt down runs of literary magazines and signed first editions of tricky prose, and place them in university library archives. I collect comic books and the Jokers from decks of playing cards. I also ...