National Poetry Month Archives - Sensitive Skin Magazine

Poetry Month, 2015

The Editors

What a Poetry Month it's been! Special thanks to Winston Smith for the back cover. Here's links to all 30 posts: April 1 - John S. Hall and Rick Prol April 2 - Bonny Finberg and Charles Gatewood April 3 - JD King April...

Suspect Device

Michael Carter

for Seamus Heaney In a cold stone cabin In a deserted Cill Rialaig solstice-tide, West wind wailing through drafty rafters, Enounced aloud “Hrothgar Skyldinga” & your Beowulf by turf-light, Huddled in checkered ...

Flack from Taylor

Taylor Mead

A President who makes war Against and on Behalf of the Worst of the Arab world. Who sells the country to the Japanese government and its subsidized corporations. Who is a mealy-mouthed lying bastard Banker. W...

I’ve Got My Shiny Kitten

Sharon Mesmer

— for Yun Peng Hell yeah I’m skinny. My body is COVERED in skin! But I’ve got my shiny kitten and I am not the same person I used to be. Shopping naked with my shiny kitten is like finding out that Beyonc�...

off on grand boulevard

Norman Douglas

1. fuck you fuck you fuck you scribbled the self- proclaimed, officially acclaimed, pharmaceutically addle-brained bourgeois poet in morning electric’s light. okay, i added the burgher bit because i’m talking cit...

The Viewing

David Rattray

The wife spoke to me by name: “Thanks so much for coming, David.” Some didn’t want to see him. One wouldn’t even go in. I did. I touched his hand. It was as if he were only sleeping, soft and warm. I never ...

Call Up

John Farris

Today the world is wet & white: everybody tries to throw the snow back (a girl, determined, handles a shovel gingerly, sends a pile of it scattering; it flies to the court below, exposing a red-stained Kreolite stair, ...

Kiss of Kind

Carl Watson

Virtue and Fear Stare at each other in the mirror, They feed upon & tease each other Until neither one remembers what it used to be. That mirror’s name is Vanity, It can make a body live in harmony ...

Last Supper in an Airport

Ronald B. Richardson

Dawdle. Doodle. What to do? Spill an alphabet, spill a stew. Fire the cauldron, eat the bread, soon those waiting will be dead. Down the supper, drink the curse; no matter how dull, death is worse. --Ron Richar...

Landscape with a Bear in It Somewhere

Rebecca Weiner Tompkins

The limber late light travels across the ridge where the bear climbed. Even with my head thrown back I still can’t take in the tops of the tall pointed trees up there. A friend’s death is flickering in and out of...

For an Infant in the Throes of a Fatal Condition

Robert C. Hardin

Cirrhosis isn’t half as bad As maladies you might have had. A failing liver strains the muscles But liberates the red corpuscles. When voided kidneys soak one’s dollies, Relief, like spasms, comes in volleys. Rope-...

Erasure, The Lotus Eaters, Ulysses*

Larissa Shmailo

BY LORRIES ALONG SIR JOHN ROGERSON’S QUAY past Nichols’ the undertaker’s. Eleven, daresay. Sent his right hand with slow grace over his hair: Where was the chap I saw in that picture somewhere? Ah, in the dead s...

Some of My Friends

Max Blagg

“Some of my friends don’t know who they belong to.” Dipsomanic daytrippers kicking it in small motels on desert mornings dancing a june bug sonata percussive staccato legato flowing smooth and certain as a rive...

Linda

Eddie Woods

LINDA “songs like a practiced whore who turns away from no one but the one who loves her.” --Djuna Barnes How deathly strange it all seems— especially here on the thin edge of passion, ...

Swallow the Evidence

Wanda Phipps

Inspired by The Limits of Control, a film by Jim Jarmusch my mind hops back to the century trees of Cabo de Gata a woman in platinum wig white cowboy hat white trench coat and cowboy boots covered in leopard’s ...