Poem
Talking Alligator Therapist Puppet™
Sharon Mesmer
I read there’s a talking alligator puppet
that doubles as a therapist.
He is realistically rendered, with velour ruching
and soft plastic teeth.
Sliding pole action enables his mouth
to open up and down, and his head...
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Poem
Wasps
Osip Mandelstam
In an interview from 1976, Nadezhda Mandelstam, the widow of the great Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, was asked if she had any favorite poems. She mentioned two, both written in the winter of 1937: “Verses about an unknown ...
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Readings
Sensitive Skin Beer Virus Reading #4 – April 16, 2020
The Editors
An online Zoom reading presented by Sensitive Skin magazine featuring work by:
Mia Hansford (Chattanooga, TN)
Liza Béar (NYC)
Jose Padua (Washington, DC)
Tony DuShane (Los Angeles)
Online readings every Thursday for...
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Poem
Poem for Gregory Corso’s Ashes in the English Cemetery in Rome
Gerald Nicosia
Dear Gregory, as long as I knew you
They were throwing you out of places
I watched Bob Levy
Normally a kind man
Give you the bum’s rush out of City Lights
Yelling, “We want your books here
But not you!”
(There w...
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Poem
Walking with Steve to the Book Party
Linda Kleinbub
I picked Steve up at his apartment
his was door’s ajar, when I arrived
I don’t remember if I rang or knocked
but he yelled, Come in.
Steve was sitting on his sofa, wearing shades.
He began telling me his stories
h...
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Poem
Lucky, Lulu, and a Cat Named Bo (Cold Turkey)
Phillip Giambri
Thanksgiving, 3:00 PM
Sixth floor walk-up in an old tenement building
next to the Ukie funeral parlor on 7th Street.
Black and white TV on,
rabbit ears up, sound off.
Thanksgiving Day Parade is over.
Santa’s bee...
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Readings
Sensitive Skin Beer Virus Reading #3
The Editors
On April 9, 2020, we had another terrific show via Zoom, featuring readings by:
- Puma Perl (NYC)
- Larissa Shmailo (NYC)
- Marc Olmsted (Portland, OR) and
- Joshua Mohr (San Francisco)
Vinnie Zangrillo (Strong Isla...
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Readings
Sensitive Skin Beer Virus Reading #2
The Editors
A virtual reading presented by Sensitive Skin Magazine, on April 2nd, 2020, featuring:
- John J. Trause (New Jersey)
- Marguerite Van Cook (New York)
- Rich Ferguson (LA)
- Bonny Finberg (New York)
- Erika Schickel (LA)...
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Readings
Sensitive Skin Beer Virus Reading #1
The Editors
Sorry, no April Poetry Month this year - but we've still got plenty of poetry coming your way (and prose too!). We'll be running virtual online readings for the duration of the shelter-in-place order (so...September 2021?). ...
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Story
Have a Seat
Richard Charles Schaefer
What do banal pricks dream about? You know the type; if he’s not your boss, he’s your boss’s boss, your father, or your stepfather. He exerts influence over some part of your life, and it’s not unreasonable to wonder...
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Story
Me and Neil
Joe McAvoy
There was a time from around 1971 to … well … now, I guess, when I was rather obsessed with a singer/songwriter from our great neighbor-nation to the north. Some who knew me in the seventies—I grew more discreet over t...
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Review
SOUTH AMERICAN JOURNALS January – July 1960 by Allen Ginsberg – review
Marc Olmsted
SOUTH AMERICAN JOURNALS
January - July 1960
by Allen Ginsberg
edited by Michael Schumacher
University of Minnesota Press
$29.95
First, I was immediately struck by how much unpublished poetry or early drafts (such as "Aether" and "Magic Psalm") are contained in this volume - far beyond any previous journal publications of Allen Ginsberg. In fact, he mostly wrote his journal as poetry during this period. Granted much is not A-list material, as Allen correctly understood in not publishing a lot of it. But for earnest scholars and fans, it is a gold mine. There are also amazing little notations of events, such as seeing Montgomery Clift's "Raintree County" ("he too looks sad" - in fact, Monty's face-rearranging car crash occurred in the middle of filming that picture). Likewise a long dream about Marlon Brando, who imitates Jack Kerouac's voice at one point(!) and includes a dream discussion of how great Orson Welles' Magn...
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Review
Among the Boat People – A Memoir of Vietnam – Review
Martha King
Among the Boat People - A Memoir of Vietnam
Nhi Mahn Chung
Autonomedia, 2019
Nhi Chung has been working on this book off and on for over twenty years. A few portions have been published, mostly "earlier versions" since rewritten -- but none of them in terms of readability, literary conventions, story-telling principals -- none of them WORK. Just the same, a comprehensive new edition from Autonomedia was launched at BlueStockings Bookshop on Friday, January 17. Why?
The lack of consistent timeline, the disjointed pacing, the flattened emotions, actually make Ms. Chung's book an amazing document and finally a deeply moving one.
Her book through its many changes, quotations from the work of others and evidence of rewriting "help", remains utterly artless. I know that word has a sweet definition. It can be taken to mean charm. Without guile or artifice. But at bottom "artless" means exactly what it says: Without art. ...
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Story
Intersection
Bari Lynn Hein
I come here every Friday. Same time – between three and three thirty, before rush hour. No one knows I come.
In the summer it was easy to gather the dead flowers from the week before; all I had to do was snap their dry ...
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Writing
The Liver of a Beagle
Ann Levin
If I hadn’t known before, then I knew on the plane. Everything was different. It was the first time I could remember that I wasn’t afraid of flying. I couldn’t drink, but I didn’t want to. I didn’t even need the al...
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