Sensation
March 20, 2025

Letter from the Editor-in-Chief
The theme for our ninth issue is Sensation, but just as well could’ve been Foreplay. Our overarching theme for this year is Play Party and each theme reflects different types of encounters one may experience at such a setting. As with all of our themes, though, we play fast and loose with these themes. While some may be quite literal, our larger interest in the ways in which certain themes and experiences tell us something about who we are as humans. With Sensation, we’re just getting warmed up, arousing our senses in titillating and unexpected ways.

One surprising motif in this selection is in seeing the body as something to be devoured. In Hannah Page’s “Cunt Steak”, she writes:

The vaginal is often equated to the floral,
but there’s nothing floral between my legs—only meat

and membranes, nodules and crannies that open like worlds.

And then, a little later:

This is not violence. This is dinner.

In Nicole Brogdon’s “Heat Something Up for Dinner”, she writes of a woman extracting her own vagina from the freezer:

Thud, onto butcher block, hoary frosty. She tears at the paper. Split like a taco inside, tender soft organ meat—as she recalls.

In Michaella Sangiolo’s “Creature Feature”, she writes:

i have an extra mouth
that i take out of my purse sometimes
deep throat manhattan like soft serve
banks and rats and honey dipped girls
down the hatch

The relationship between the sexual and the culinary have long been entwined in coital embrace. It’s no surprise, really. Both start with the body, its sensations, which in turn activates our imaginations, our fantasies, our memories, and whatever else lurks within our personal psychic landscapes. The impulse to devour and be devoured, too, speaks to the tension between our desires for control and surrender.

Our featured guest contributor this issue is Lee Harrington, one of the leading voices in developing awareness around issues of sex and sexuality. Lee’s body of work includes explorations of kink, shibari, paganism, trans rights, and many other topics. I first discovered Lee through two of his books, Playing Well With Others: Your Field Guide to Discovering, Exploring and Navigating the Kink, Leather and BDSM Communities, which he cowrote with Molena Williams, and Sacred Kink: The Eightfold Path of BDSM and Beyond. Lee is truly a gift, thoughtful and piercingly insightful. His poem, “A Servant’s Prayer is accompanied by an ASL performance by Meredith Peruzzi.

Finally, I feel it’s imperative to speak to the moment we’re all in where safe spaces are eroding, and our sisters and brothers in queer and trans communities are coming under threat. I’ve long thought it important to hold space for honest exploration and expression of who we are at our most primal and fundamental cores. That’s been the mission of Pink Disco from its inception. Now, more than ever, I feel a need to resist through art, through culture, through sex, and through our bodies. This magazine is a small and humble gesture towards such resistance.



Letter from the Art Editor
As Bruce stated in his letter, this issue is about Sensation, about foreplay, about the tickle of a feather on skin or of teeth on an earlobe. Our four art contributors in this issue illustrate that masterfully.

To start off the night, is sarah chenoweth’s Portrait, a plea beckoning to a lover. Her image is followed by those of collage artists, Morgan Jenson and Kathy Bruce. Morgan’s piece depicts the classic crone and the maid, two opposite phases of the female hero, looking on one another, perhaps holding more in common than apart. Kathy’s images are striking depictions of the female form, stitched together from many sources, again showing that perhaps we share more with one another than we differ. Finally, Callypigeon by Camellia Paul is a bit of ‘cheeky’ fun, double entendre intended as was her own pun.

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My own journey as an artist - and probably as a human being with some sort of understanding of themselves - began as many do, with scribbles in crayon on paper. Over the years, I drew fervently, as if I were seeking something, clawing for some kind of truth on the page. Eventually, in college, I think, I tried my hand at photography and immediately decided that I would “be a photographer.”

I was particularly intrigued by studio work and the excitement of working with willing subjects led me to dabble at shooting nudes. I developed tame images in the early morning hours in the school’s dark room, hoping no one would burst in on me, both in fear of being discovered and of the photos being ruined before they could be chemically set. Near the end of my time in school, I turned the camera inward, completing a series of self-portraits. These were similarly nude, if only sharing myself from the waist up.

This was a time of exploration for me, as an artist and as a human.

These days, I draw nearly every day, but have only recently begun to rekindle an interest in my own photography. I had found myself overwhelmed by the scope and depth of amazing works in the world and decided to take a break. It all began again innocently enough, with selfie-prompts from an ex-lover, but I wanted to share the image with you here, as it seems the appropriate forum and, perhaps, a more honest introduction than I've ever given. The prompt (given by sarah chenoweth, in fact) was: “Send me the most artistic image you can of your right foot.”

___

This issue’s playlist can be found here.
Guest Contributor
Lee Harrington
A Servant’s Prayer
(click to read)

A Servant’s Prayer
Poem by Lee Harrington
First published in On Starry Thighs: Sacred and Sensual Poetry

A Servant’s Prayer
ASL Version by Meredith Peruzzi
Original Poem by Lee Harrington
Hotel Sting, Tokyo, Japan
Visual Art
sarah chenoweth
Portrait
Morgan Jenson
Smile!
Kathy Bruce
And Then Some
Under Her Glamorous Skin
Camellia Paul
Callypigeon
Poetry
Kira Córdova
Bustamante
Kalea Miyoshi
As A Replacement For Relief
Michaella Sangiolo
Creature Feature
Lambing Season
Hannah Page
Cunt Steak
Candle Spells
Unlatch
Fiction
Nicole Brogdon
Heat Something Up for Dinner
nat raum
lucky ones
kindling
Nonfiction
Matt Salerno
Reclaimed in the Name of Eden
Camellia Paul
The Last Daybreak



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