Story
Alphanumerica
Robert C. Hardin
The streets were numbered forward and the avenues backward, so that you began at H and walked until you reached the first letter. Then the next avenue, like the first street, began a forward count from one to two and so on....
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Poem
Prismed Autumn (an Imitation)
Robert C. Hardin
Prismed Autumn (an Imitation)
You who denigrate the Fall as nature’s end:
Have you beheld the brilliance of its dying?
It is not cloaked in mourning,
weighted by some sable hood,
but nakedly chromatic, varie...
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What Not
Sensitive Skin 13 – Table of Contents
The Editors
Here's the complete list of all the pieces from our 13th issue, along with the back cover, a collage of mugshots from the collection of Mark Michaelson, submitted for your perusal. If you'd like to support us, please purchas...
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Art
Best of 2015 – Sensitive Skin More Better Favorites
The Editors
This was so much fun last year, I thought we'd do it again. (Two of my favorite books of the year were ones I picked up from last year's list: Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel, recommended by Deborah Pintonelli, and ...
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Story
Welcome to All the Pleasures
Robert C. Hardin
My father liked to say that I’d always been impossible to find. During birth, he recalled, I couldn’t be extracted with forceps. No one could see me, so I made my own way out of my mother. The midwife only located me aft...
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Essay
Drone Loops and the Signature of Bliss
Robert C. Hardin
The experience of bliss means different things to different people. For this frustratingly former arranger and studio keyboard player, euphoria is conditioned by the search for perfect sounds.
To me, bliss means the slow...
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Poem
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-...
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Review
The Antisocial Butterfly – a review of Jill Rapaport’s “Duchamp et Moi”
Robert C. Hardin
It begins with a withered Dadaist and parents. In the title story of Jill Rapaport’s new collection, Duchamp et Moi, a French-Romanian pop and painter mom learn that their favorite creaking enfant terrible is in town. ...
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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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Essay
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...
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Sensitive Skin Live at Bowery Poetry Club, 8-15-2010
The Editors
Contributors to past, present and future issues showed up at the Bowery Poetry Club, August 15, 2010 in New York City. Much thanks to the proprietor, Bob Holman, for hosting us (and for joining us as a special guest star). E...
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Story
Merthiolate (and Other Futile Antiseptics)
Robert C. Hardin
Merthiolate
After failing to kill myself for the eighteenth time, I decided to be more positive. Why focus on failure? I thought. Why not appreciate the character added by damage to my once-perfect body? But despite the p...
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