Essay
Beer Mystic Burp #19: Beer in Times of Distillation
bart plantenga
“glory wreathes, flutes” • Karen Garthe, “Buckle Up, Sweetie”
bart plantenga
I buy beer when other purchasing behavior fails. I drink beer to slow down the ridiculous spin of this earth & defuse those who...
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Story
Russian Graves
Larissa Shmailo
One of my favorite places in the world is the Russian Orthodox Cemetery in Spring Valley, New York, which is known as Novo Diveyevo. An Anglo, used to containing his dead in unrelenting grids of slabs of stone atop preternat...
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Story
The Forgetting of Water
Doug Rice
Mai struggles to experience the place of words in her body. The slow patience of her tongue, of her lips. The care she gives to each letter, the way each letter shapes her mouth. Each word changes her. This foreign tongue...
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Story
Sucker
Susan Scutti
I was walking along the south side of Houston, heading home from a friend’s house. I’d stopped by to pick up my copy of The Big Sleep, one of many loaned-and-borrowed books between us. I was living on Prince Street then...
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Comics
The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick
R. Crumb
Shortly before his death, Philip K. Dick has what can only be described as a religious experience, which he described in, among other places, his novel Valis. In Weirdo #17, R. Crumb adapted Dick's story.
Click the image ...
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Classics
The Metamorphosis
Franz Kafka
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see ...
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Writing
Herbert Huncke: Letter to Dad
Herbert Huncke
Editor’s Note: This letter from Herbert Huncke to his Dad was first published in Peau Sensible, the print precursor to Sensitive Skin, in the summer of 1992. The issue also contained work by Joel Rose, Jack Micheline, Dari...
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Essay
Beer Mystic Burp #18: The Long Windy Road to a Closed Bar
bart plantenga
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqEeL1QzGsc
BEER MYSTIC: Read Beer Drink Novel: I thought by serving words in the name of beer & side effect mysticism would be repaid in not only the enchantment of words & the jo...
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Classics
The Veldt
Ray Bradbury
"George, I wish you'd look at the nursery.""What's wrong with it?""I don't know.""Well, then.""I just want you to look at it, is all, or call a psychologist in to
look at it.""What would a psychologist want with a nurser...
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Story
The Nose
Nikolai Gogol
Part I
On 25 March an unusually strange event occurred in St. Petersburg. For that morning Barber Ivan Yakovlevitch, a dweller on the Voznesensky Prospekt (his family name is lost now—it no longer figures on a signbo...
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Essay
THE THIRLWELL EFFECT
Díre McCain
Genuine virtuosos are a rare breed. They defy categorization simply by existing. Their visionary ingenuity radiates from their work in spades, and effortlessly so. It can come at a price, in terms of their creations being lo...
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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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Story
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...
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Story
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...
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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...
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