The Opportunity of a Lifetime
Mike Hudson
The canyon was broken and hilly, with shallow arroyos cutting north to south and green agave plants and small stands of Joshua trees providing the only color there was against the relentless grey of the desert and the dirty ...
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, ...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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.
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...
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...
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...
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
...
Some Poems
Les Bridges
Stuck on a Runway
Thunderheads loom over Dallas.
Stranded planes mill
like nervous, 100-ton cattle,
blood streaks across silver flanks.
185 strangers and I marinate
...
How to Stop Smoking in Nineteen-thousand-two-hundred-and-eighty-seven Seconds, Usama
Chavisa Woods
I asked no questions about anything. i just wanted to smoke cigarettes. Lots and lots of cigarettes.
I come back once a year to visit. I only stay a few days. I try not to ask too many questions. There’s noth...
If You Play and If You Die
Jim Feast
Artemis Brewster owned a large retail store in New Jersey, the Bargain Toy Mart (Toys for Less!) And he loved science fiction as much as what he sold. But his was not the doting, immature love of the geeky fanboy, it was...
Todd Colby—Eight Poems
Todd Colby
Peace & Good Order
Okay dear, whatever you can manage
will be propped up in a boat next to you
full of apologies and texts from some cabin
pumped with nitrous oxide next to the oce...
