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The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine of Art, Literature and Music! Number 9 $5.95 John Lurie/Samuel Delany/Vladimir Mayakovsky/James Romberger Fred Frith/Marty Thau/ Larissa Shmailo/Darius James/Doug Rice/ and much, much more . SENSITIVE SKIN MAGAZINE is also available online at www.sensitiveskinmagazine.com. Publisher/Managing Editor: Bernard Meisler Associate Editors: Rob Hardin, Mike DeCapite & B. Kold Music Editor: Steve Horowitz Contributing Editors: Ron Kolm & Tim Beckett This issue is dedicated to Chris Bava. Front cover: Prime Directive, by J.D. King Back cover: James Romberger You can find us at: Facebook—www.facebook.com/sensitiveskin Twitter—www.twitter.com/sensitivemag YouTube—www.youtube.com/sensitiveskintv We also publish in various electronic formats (Kindle, iOS, etc.), and have our own line of books. For more info about SENSITIVE SKIN in other formats, SENSITIVE SKIN BOOKS, and books, films and music by our contributors, please go to www.sensitiveskinmagazine.com/store. To purchase back issues in print format, go to www.sensitiveskinmagazine.com/back-issues. You can contact us at [email protected]. Submissions: www.sensitiveskinmagazine.com/submissions. All work copyright the authors 2012. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of both the publisher and the copyright owner. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. ISBN-10: 0-9839271-6-2 Contents The Forgetting of Water—Doug Rice 4 Sucker—Susan Scutti 7 Russian Graves—Larissa Shmailo 9 New Paintings—John Lurie 11 Chapter 90—Samuel Delany 31 Mayakovsky 1913: New Translations—Jenny Wade 34 Killing Williamsburg—Bradley Spinelli 44 Bump Your Ass Off—Anna Mockler 51 Suicide Tour—Marty Thau 54 Sodomy Is a Threat to National Security—Jesús Ángel García 58 Interview: Fred Frith—The Editors 61 Photographs—Chris Bava 67 The United States of Hoodoo: Interview with Darius James—Ghazi Barakat 84 New Bedford Real Estate—Amman Sabet 92 Contributors 97 The Forgetting of Water Doug Rice ai struggles to experience the The tip of each finger as precise, as agile, as an place of words in her body. The slow eyelid. patience of her tongue, of her lips. Maia’s body waits for the sun to vanish behind The care she gives to each letter, the clouds. Her fingers childish and curious pulling the way each letter shapes her mouth. Each word blackberries from a bush. “All through the foothills changes her. This foreign tongue she now speaks as if of Vietnam,” she tells Doug, “there are people whose Mit were her mother tongue. skin is made of rain. Some say such people are only J’ai toujours aime l’eau passionnement. the people of myth, of old stories dropped along the Mai tortures words. Teases them with tender slips way, the wet underside of river rocks.” Her eyes wit- of her tongue. She only speaks around the edges ness the appearance of these words, her words, her of letters. Innocent, yet punished like trees after a breath, her dreaming. “These people say this as if torrential rain and wind- myths were not true, storm. Ripped from as if the people of their place of stillness. Mai contemplates her wounds. myths were not real. Beneath her lan- But I have met these guage another language Only damaged skin can seduce people. I have touched haunts her. One more the water of their skin. agile, one more ancient, her body. Torn flesh. She cuts I have listened to their one more elusive. She straight lines across her wrists. damp voices, their tells me that words whispers, their mur- from these places can She cuts as deep as she can so muring sentences.” barely be spoken. This Once upon a time, is the language of our each cut will become a scar. we are told a story of lungs, a breath that a day before the war pries open our lips. Qu’ Most memories remain silent. ended. She says, “You est-ce qu’une priere? Siren songs to herself. see only her trace.” He Climbing mountains in says, “You have not for- Vietnam, Mai walked gotten enough.” on the bones of her ancestors. With each footstep This woman remembered the fear more than the over the dry earth, the rocks, she felt her ancestors pain. And she remembered the blackberry bushes cry. Her ancestors repeatedly told Mai to be careful cutting into her ankles more than the pain that she around those who claim to know the history of fire knows she will never speak of. and yet remain unafraid of rain. She screamed at this pain, screamed against this Mai and I crossed into each other’s languages. pain, screamed into this pain to make it go away but Obeying only those words that haunted us. it never went away. Ever. Even now. Even in this Tongue. moment. Finger. Imagine a butterfly being pinned to a board. That Lips. tiny cry of terror suffocated beneath glass. The brail of this loving. She only wished to domi- Some man blindfolded this woman, then pushed nate desire. her down into the mud. She did all she could to 4 remember that day long ago, before those bombs this child’s hair to let the child know there is always began falling down on her village, before she and her hope, that trees reach up from the earth to touch the people dug tunnels, before they learned this new way sky. for breathing, before she broke her fingernails claw- Naked. ing at the dry dirt. She did all she could to remember The child’s touch abandoned this woman. that day she picked herself up out of the earth. Callused hands grabbed the woman’s wrists, pulled She imagined she was made of water. them behind her back. Bound them with rope. Then someone with soft hands, a young girl per- Nineteen years of innocence but now this woman’s haps, undressed this woman. The woman listened to fingers break. Now her wrists burn. Now her strong the child’s soft crying as this child unbuttoned what tongue touches the roof of her dry silent mouth. remained of this woman’s blouse. The woman wanted Maybe so she will not forget, she falls asleep. to comfort the child, to whisper a prayer, a chant, Mai contemplates her wounds. Only damaged but this woman can no longer speak. Her tongue has skin can seduce her body. Torn flesh. She cuts straight been burned by coals. lines across her wrists. She cuts as deep as she can so This woman moved her fingers to lightly touch each cut will become a scar. Most memories remain What You Eat II, acrylic on polyester, HaYoung Kim, 2012 5 silent. Siren songs to herself. they fear lighting their bamboo lanterns, and when When she speaks of home, Maia tastes those fires their eyes close to sleep, to dream, to collapse, they on her tongue, and her words turn to ash. are haunted by a fear that they will live inside this She wept. On her knees. At the river. darkness for the rest of their lives. This water, all this The blood of Mai’s ancestors ran through her syl- water, this ocean must end, but her family, so quiet, lables. Her mother, when Mai was still an infant, can no longer find their faith, only splinters in their warned Mai that if she ever bit into her tongue, she fingers and persistent small pains in their strong feet. could poison herself with her past, the stories from They want to disappear beyond the dark, fall off some before she was born. But Mai thought biting her unknown horizon. And they fear arriving as much tongue would release the stories of her ancestors into as they fear drowning. They speak to each other her body, into her desire. So she bit and bit until the through the songs of those nearly forgotten sparrows blood from her bleeding appeared. so their voices are not heard. Ever. They dream the Her tongue, heavy, swollen with centuries of only dream they can remember, a dream of becoming words, of wounds, of birds, spirit birds nearly sacrificial petals from invisible in the night sky, the Lotus flower, bled more dangerous than into her voice. Her tongue, heavy, swollen dreams. In some other Mai speaks con- with centuries of words, of world, where such birds fusing tender words, cannot be heard, where prattles in tongues wounds, of sacrificial petals birds are not listened to, that war against each an uncle, holding paper other—the home from the Lotus flower, bled names tight in a small tongue of her grand- into her voice. fist, waits on dry land. mother bombed to Mai dreamt with her pieces by this tongue tongue. she has adopted in exile. Pomegranate seeds between her teeth. Mutilated words made out of the bones of her Persimmon flesh between her fingers. ancestors fall from Mai’s lips. Between. Speaking in the tongue of her mother, Mai’s soft Her knees held tight. voice becomes the song of a sparrow lost among Her thighs bruised and tired. tree branches. Other women from those same hills A stray thumb near her lips in Binh Dinh spoke in the tender spirit of butter- Presses. fly wings. Veiled whispers beneath quilts. The need There is nothing in between. to survive in quiet movements. The longing to con- A thumbprint. tinue their stories. Each story one of flight through In fire, words become cinders. They wait in the the trees to the plains, to the rivers, to the oceans.

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