Drew Hubner Jose Padua Bart Plantenga Tim Beckett Bob
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post-beat, pre-apocalypic art, writing, music and what-not Number 1 June 2010 $3.95 Writing: Drew Hubner Jose Padua bart plantenga Tim Beckett Music: Bob Bannister Steve Horowitz Painting: Justine Frischmann SENSITIVE SKIN MAGAZINE is published quarterly (or so) and is available online at www.sensitiveskinmagazine.com Publisher/Managing Editor: Bernard Meisler Editor/Webmaster: Tim Beckett We also have a daily version, with cultural reportage, short stories, poems, art, video, music etc. by our past, present and future contributors, at: blog.sensitiveskinmagazine.com. You can find us on: Facebook — www.facebook.com/sensitiveskin Twitter — www.twitter.com/sensitivemag YouTube — www.youtube.com/sensitiveskintv Print editions of all issues are available. We also publish in various electronic formats (Kindle, etc), and have our own line of books. 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Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. 2 Contents The Peoples College — Drew Hubner 4 Avenue of the Americas — Jose Padua 10 New Paintings — Justine Frischmann 12 Eight Day Clock — Bob Bannister 19 Uranium City Return — Tim Beckett 20 Invasion From the Chicken Planet — Steve Horowitz 23 & The Code International Beer Mystic: A Novel of Inebriation & Light — bart plantenga 25 3 The Peoples College Drew Hubner #1-The Vet He put Juan and I into his play because he saw right away that we had talent I sell nickel bags A lot of the ones who laughed thought he was Pretty good weed sure kind of queer or something but frankly I think Bo Comes in bricks from Mexico was never happier or more turned on as we used to Ive seen the whole operation say then when he was reading Shakespeare out loud The trucks to someone The safe house up on Walton Ave He could have acted out every single one of the We went down to Manhattan to the city to party parts of the play himself if he could have done it and goof around but we never went down there to that way but he was scared of something like the sell drugs rest of us Too much trouble The real tragedy was what happened to Juan You could really get busted wide open down there He called me Che because I had the tee shirt I and you never know you might never not come home was wearing it the first day we came out in front of for a coupla years and When you did it might be in the old tire factory it was a bright sunny day and a pine box and an Army uniform by way of Vietnam they all had handpainted posters and scarves on their I saw it happen to a kid from around our way by heads the name of Rodriguez My own Uncle Willie had a hand in the factory I said I sold weed I don’t smoke it at one time That it was because of the dope that killed my I had no idea it was turning into a college father and my uncle It was Juan that put me on the news report that For the college started my career as a symbol of the underdog For the City University of New York Tell them you oppose all conventional wisdom For our people Tell them that William Blake said that The patriots of Puerto Rico USA And I did For the play Much Ado About Nothing Tell them that you sell weed but you don’t smoke That big funny man with the voice like a horse it because there aint no jobs for people like us in our who all he wanted was to put on a legitimate pro- own community duction of Shakespeare I didn’t like the idea at first of ratting myself out That was the way that he talked on the 6 o clock news but I did it and it felt like a I never laughed at him though a lot of us kids did clean middle finger to all of them and he laughed right back That was the day we met big Bo. We are talking That was Bo the fall of 1970. Beauregard to you He got us registered in the college and we met the He was six feet five if he stood up straight with a Gonzalez sisters one of whom became my first wife belly that stuck out and a couple of spindly legs and the mother of my three children Like a grown up giant bantam rooster like one of They were already in the play and studying to be my granddaddys fighting cocks dental assistants 4 Until what happened to Juan we were partners it Our feelings about war were ambivalent. It was a was the best time in my life 17 is like that lot of fun too. You found out what you were capable We were standing in front of that old tire factory of and what you were not, pdq. Though clearly it was 149th and the Grand Concourse good to get out of Vietnam, we learned a lot. Everyone had on hats and bandannas I reenlisted twice myself and each year I served, We were all growing our hair out three in total, was like a separate epic season of dis- We were mostly PRs a few brothers and Domini- covery. Even after I finished my last hitch I stuck cans and some of the dwindling number of white around as a civilian free-lancing for the government, boys a kind of special forces rehab period that ended Juan said we had to politicize our lives abruptly on April 30, 1975. I re-enrolled at Hostos A cop liked Lucy too in the fall and by spring the city was trying to close She only liked Juan but she wasn’t stupid down our college. Forgive us, for taking it personally. That’s baseball we used to say I started writing at Hostos, finished two semesters Only Lucy got in too deep there then quit and got drafted. I re-upped in ’73, Juan gets rubbed out by a runaway cop car for ’74 and in early 1975 took a job writing up reports starting fires which was three years later after I got on something called the over-integration of Ameri- back from Nam can soldiers. I was one of them. I had a girl there And you tell me that lover boy was not involved until I found out she was pregnant and it was not I don’t buy it mine. Old Bo would buy a nickel bag here and there too Welcome to Operation Frequent Wind, the evac- did I mention uation of American civilians and at-risk Vietnamese. Saying you need to rehearse A lot I had filed reports on, women in danger by But I got money to make relationships with our soldiers. We did it in the empty lot beside the high school A lot were left behind. I got on a helicopter, It was ramshackle Im telling you switched to a plane at the airport and 22 hours later The building up the road was a shooting gallery it was only in my head. It took me awhile to shake with junkies hanging out of the windows day and it out. I wish somehow sometimes I could have just night down under the Deegan was the hookers stroll shaken it out of my right ear but it doesn’t always All in the shadow of the House that Ruth Built work that way does it. It really never does. They and the gold plated Bronx Courthouse say war is over if you want it, sure, but they’re not Wild bro I swear talking about the soldier. So anyway I look back on Vietnam as some good and some bad. 2) What’s the word? Ambivalence, right. It’s a cool word. Time passed. I learned to write, landed a job as a Ezra Pound always said to write with words that tutor in the college writing center and mostly got out are concrete. I was turned onto him by Professor Bo of the dope-selling business. at Hostos, the first time I was there. He probably It might be sort of unpopular to say this but we would have preferred Shakespeare but there is some- treated the movement to save the college like it was thing clean and hard about Pound. He came to New a military campaign. Those of us from the Veter- York in 1970 and met with hippies in Washington ans Club. How could we have helped it? We were Square Park. I saw him there. He was cool, man. against the war like anyone else, I mean who is really I came back and told Professor Bo who I had met for war, but we weren’t against the military. I was in and it blew him away. He gave me a couple of books. the reserves when I came home and it wasn’t neces- He always said college is not about he classroom. It’s sarily a bad thing.