When the nose has dyslexia, the conventions of clean and dirty mutate amuck-
Nightmares of being dunked in vats of perfume become the norm-
Social status disintegrates and intimacy with a skunk brings joy-
The man burrows into remote dung heaps further and further away from the tyrannies of soap-
When the nose has dyslexia, predictable roles and behavior are scrambled anew-
Musk entrenched supermen get stampeded by berserk fawns in heat-
Germ-Phobics fondle dung beetles whom with freshly molested vigor, do hind leg roll ups of squeeky clean solid citizens-
A prudish school marm finds a hidden rabid snapping turtle in her soul after being bitten by rotten apples given jaws by the teacher’s pet gone astray-
When the nose has dyslexia, rampant desire surpasses grandiose expectation.
A wart on a baboon’s ass blossoms into a more fragrant-than-thou perfume garden berry infecting a bestial psychopath who then penetrates with valor the furious posteriors of mandrills shimmying with profane delight
Eager vines of algae growing up from centuries of neglected teeth, climb greedily towards the fortune of a fresh breath heiress-
Gooey-Pollyannas wash their mouths out with soap before reciting mantras of bland nicety to contrite career criminals gnawing on clean conscience bunions jutting from angel’s feet-
19 of ClubsTrio of Femme SirensAuf Die SchaukelPhosphorescent Clown SquigglesLucky LimulusBrunette March
When the nose has dyslexia, sacred values of societal dust are sculpted into new poisons by the playful rogue nostril metastasizing-
The Outhouse-Leper becomes a vengeful king, skinning the pillars of communities, turning the hides into outhouse doormats-
Blind Peeping Toms suddenly regain their sight munching on outhouse-doormat brittle–thus seeing and tasting time honored models of proper conduct-
Yeast Infected Vaginas curtsy with hypnotic finesse, flirting with clownish tumescent yam jam giraffes, spurting forth voyeurs turning into martyrs, turning into manic surgeons whittling skunky joy toys in a sleepless scalpel trance-
When the nose has dyslexia, the lightning of childhood memory strikes unlikely victims–oceans of crystallized feelings awaken from deep sleeps re-inventing the heart-
A hardened Loan Shark gets entangled, softened and diced up by the frail sadnesses evoked by the rubbery wet scent of his baby sister’s favorite dolly lost in a distant rainstorm-
A loud mouthed schoolyard bully becomes a mute wise old sage, transcending all utterance, ruminating inwardly, building shrines of cookie crumb folly from the remnants of desserts the bully once coerced from the trembling hands of weaklings entombed in the bowels of forgotten grammar school lunch rooms-
The cold stares of ultra strict baby sitters, soberly stretch a whiny little brat’s dirty diapers into an almighty circus tent tundra sheltering cleaner than clean orphans sired by soap bubbles popping-
Formative Foodchain
When the nose has dyslexia, embarrassment lurks in excess.
The man narrowly escapes the lewd clutches of Germ-Phobics hiding in lairs of undigested corn kernels waiting to leap out and fondle him.
He burrows inexorably deeper into remote dung heaps further and further away from the tyrannies of soap, eventually reaching paradise, where fragrant nirvana is sweetest, and stench lost its voice to the carrion bird who sings dirty in reverse.
The man enters The-Nose-Has-Dyslexia restaurant, ordering a Skunky-Joy-Toy kiss smothered in freshly molested dung beetle sauce.
As frail diced up cubes of sensitive Loan Shark say grace, crowds of manic surgeons saddened by lost wet dollies, serve the meal in a sleepless scalpel trance-
The man tastes paradise, blessed by the voice of stench stolen by the carrion bird who sings dirty in reverse.
Suddenly The-Outhouse-Leper-Turned-Vengeful-King appears, interrupting the man eating, pedantically assailing him with correct table manner etiquette, forcing a squeeky clean knife and fork into his dungy hands…
Richard Gessner’s fiction has been published in Air Fish: an anthology of speculative work, Rampike, Ice River, Coe Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Happy, The Act, Sein und Werden, Skidrow Penthouse, The Pannus Index, Fiction International and many other magazines. A collection, Excerpts from the Diary of a Neanderthal Dilettante & The Man in the Couch was published by Bomb Shelter Props. Gessner’s drawings and paintings have appeared in Raw Vision, Courier News, Asbury Park Press, Rampike, Skidrow Penthouse, and exhibited at Pleiades Gallery, Hamilton Street Gallery, Cry Baby Gallery, The Court Gallery and the Donald B. Palmer Museum. He lives in Montclair, New Jersey.
“The Amazing Richard Gessner, Wizard of the word, and Alchemist of the image” -Vincent Czyz May 24, 2022
THIS WRITING IS AN AUTHORIZED DUPLICATION WITH PERMISSION AND EXPRESSED CONSENT
How do you put yourself into a trance or into a place that’s receptive to the subconsciousness?
I find the act of drawing in itself to be trance inducing. I first became obsessed with automatic drawing in high school because it felt like it would light up my brain and smooth out all of my anxious energy. It would literally feel like I was drawing my way out of a stupor and waking up to the strangeness of my own mind.
Drawing helps me reach that valuable state where I can feel awake and alert, yet simultaneously relaxed. I find that my breathing slows down when I’m drawing and time feels more fluid. It helps to have a quiet studio where I can go and disappear for hours at a time. I think of the imagination as a living thing that I have an ever evolving relationship with. If I meet it halfway and submerse myself in the creative process, I get to interact with and explore the subconscious and come back with artistic documentation.
What interests inform and inspire you?
So many things. I love outsider, folk, visionary, and ancient art. Whenever art is made from an inner need or impulse, I find it extremely valuable. I love children’s art. I have 2 kids and love watching the way their minds work. I love creative collaboration as a way to relate to another person’s mind and bring out something totally unexpected and new.
I’m interested in neuroscience and new scientific thought around the so called Hard Problem of Consciousness and Theories of Everything. I love to read. Especially speculative fiction, strange fiction, and comics. I’m hugely inspired by nature and spend a lot of time in the woods. Learning some carpentry skills is another thing that’s been opening me up to new art possibilities. Just sitting and trying to clearly see images or hear music in my head is an ongoing practice.
What role do you think the artist has in the 21st century?
The best thing an artist can do is follow their own unique impulse. Artists need to push back against the bizarre human drive to homogenize everything. They need to reach beyond the inadequate systems we live inside.
I think diversity of culture and human expression is the most valuable thing we can cultivate as a species. I also think it’s important for artists to have an anti-cruelty stance. There’s so much cruelty in our history and baked into our systems. I think the artist’s role is to look unflinchingly at this and attempt to untie those knots. Art can be part of the antidote to the bad ideas that seem to cling to our brains and stunt our evolution.
Have you experienced Lucid Dreaming or any kind of encounter with cosmic consciousness?
Yes, I’ve had quite a few experiences that have felt outside of normal cognitive experience. Each of these experiences feel incredibly valuable to me and I’m thankful for them. Mostly I’ve regretted it whenever I’ve tried to describe them to people. They feel like something to internalize and hold close. It’s easy to discount things that don’t fit with the narrative of the everyday, so I try to think about those experiences a lot and not let them fade into doubt.
When did you create or discover your own archetypical patterns?
I started with automatic drawing, just letting my hand draw without knowing where it would go. Through that, a lot of patterns and imagery naturally began to emerge and I would just kind of follow that. Through years of working in this way and contemplating the recurring symbols, a lot of ideas and feelings started taking shape. Making comics became a way to explore that more actively by trying to unlock the stories and concepts that my drawings were revealing to me.
Has your work ever lead you to an experience of intuition or synchronicity?
Following an artistic impulse is in itself an intuitive and synchronistic experience. It adds an extra dimension to my daily life and when I have positive momentum in my work, I feel like that crosses over into my daily life and helps me see connections and meaning. Putting my work out into the world has also allowed me to meet a lot of people I wouldn’t have met otherwise, so in that way, I feel like dedicating myself to making art has allowed me to have important friendships that have inspired and helped me grow.
What do you like to cook?
I love cooking. I cook almost every night. I like to make enchiladas with sauce made from scratch. I like making sushi, jambalaya, grilled pizza, salmon. It’s just fun to work a kitchen and try to be efficient with all the different elements in play and it’s satisfying to serve up something good to my family. Cleaning up the kitchen afterwards is not as fun.
Theo Ellsworth is a self-taught artist living in Montana. His previously published comics include Capacity, The Understanding Monster, Sleeper Car, and An Exorcism. The New York Times once called his work, Imagination at firehose intensity. He has been the recipient of the Lynd Ward Honor Book Prize and an Artist Innovation Award. He loves creative collaboration, cooking, and making family folk art with his kids. He is constantly making invisible performance art in his head that no one will ever see.
05/14/21 cosmic fires burn behind the rich, black fabric of the night which parts to let the magic pass as particles of filtered light the door lies open, the gate lies closed life travels, small and swift through tiny tears a missing stitch and life. the flow itself the tear itself the seam a sight of seeming death that folds, unfolds itself in weeds of grief and swaddles itself and for the first time sees that there the door lies open to those laid out or she on knees black wings opened out speak out in seven rings the universe talks and, so, we sing
07/09/21 shifting stars and shifting rays of light pierce, project through fractal lens into the fractured night the universe mind filters through this facet and another then the other and the next it’s all-color light refracted into rainbow shimmer variations, life the shadow dark descent of being is iridescent sacred, sweet the night is full of teeming things and thoughts of universe that sings
09/03/21 black wings flap against the dawn lingering sweetly in the dark prolonging, savoring the last few tendrils of night but the dark, black velvet sky grows thin and soon the silken cloth of twilight transparent and delicate ripples, dissolves in a moment is gone and morning begins a teardrop bright and golden falls to the bottom of the deep blue bowl that holds it, the sky and rolls back down the otherside and so the sun descends again, again again once, we saw it rise but that was long ago before we learned its name and learned to make the choice ever to fall or ever to rise or yet-to-be asleep abide
EGREGORE An exhibition by the Atlanta Surrealist Group Steven Cline, Hazel Cline, Aaron Dylan Kearns, Juli Maria Kearns, Megan Leach, Steve Morrison. October 21-31 2021 The Bakery – Atlanta, Georgia
ELEPHANT WORLD
Collaborative writing: Hazel & Steven Cline
Grey smoke, static-waiting in this lonely god-form, the elephant world. Atmosphere of iron, melting into sea. The sea must move. Must never stop. Yet, it never forgets. From the cavernous, from the well, a swallow jumps. Its cry the first sound, its wings flap the first wind into being and make the movers move. Time, wrapped in a desert blanket, becomes muffled. A lunar heli-clipse spirals inside outside, holding death in her paws, crush what skull to wholeness? A mouse, a mouse of silver coat, has singed the lungs of the elephants who dance in circles under their lost mother, the moon. Stars expand, devouring the black, betraying the void. And as the myriad forms octopi the fountains of misery, love and thermometers break free. Is it cold or burning in the heart of the world; Is it strange, or stranger?
01/03/2020 the darkening skies must shudder and crack the darkening limits of love must break and the lightning must flow through the veins of the glow the violet glow of history unchained and memory unknown there is a quiet place in unrequited grief we must keep our face streaked with grief and never forget again that we love the lightning of hillsides and the lightening of hearts must not stop the lightning that breaks our barriers apart
Ornithomancy: divination by observation of the flight of birds
ALLCLOCKWORK
Collaborative writing: Hazel & Steven Cline
The Universe, her own lost lover, may be seen as machine, as a spiraling victorian machine of goldgear, allclockwork like a song, who descends again this dream. Angelic beings formulated only as a song of pure smell drift inward, licking like a perfumed song. A scented song that melts into black glass, darker than vacuum and more crystalline than volcanic orangutans. The seabird honks slowly, irreversibly, a world into myth. The spiderweb lacework left behind by all this resembles only slightly the forlorn face of Desire and her aging pack-animal, the horned, helical diviser of all manners of play. Patterns of a great mathematical sigh leap forward, and reveal themselves to have been all along a simple jest to amuse the one remembered in Desire’s lair. Speak! Reverse! This, the pelican calls to me, to be unafraid. This last day is sweet. A multitude, an ancient epoch, indwelling therein may, inside those glittering gears, break bread with shadows. But ever, ever, while the lonely lives we lead sits weeping by her mirror, can the Victrola spit out its slugs of light. In the sky above, what! cries the clouds, what is this fracture, this suture called time? Or elsewhere called form? Around us, a tower sheds its skin. Inside us, a tower devours and delights. And this hour is born as if it were the first hour, and the last hour, penetrating deep the ear of the Other. Again and again, but this time, the gears are well worn. This time…our ghosts dance.
RAINBOW DIVING
Collaborative writing: Hazel & Steven Cline
A rainbow earthbound, dividing itself, disassembling. Red, caught in prairie dog’s embrace, builds his mudhouse around the hourglass cavern entrance. Blue, thoughtform, endodermic emissaries as its always, reshapes rain into purring playful kittens. Red, again, many times, but this time, most sweetly does it redden. Yellow kicks world’s undercarriage in its shins, bumbling slowly, stupidly; of all the violent yellows of the imagination, honey alone is tenderest, a spongecake, a saucy milksop. Ah, but purple! A color now, and then another. One color and many, Solitary and mixed. But all of these are just wet laundry in cardboard, skybleeders without care. Try instead the complexity of the allcolor udder that fills bellybirth calendars with Orange with Orange’s sad and wayward beams. Indeed, full orchards in bloom. Undercurrents undersea, liquidic petunias, Green breaks all this in her witherworn gaze, drowning into pulpworm magnificents. Learn well, then, the mazes of the deeps, or fall eternally, inexorably into farting arabesques! Or else, the obsidian horizons and wellsprings by which the silent tuber sleeps.
A Virtual Post Card to the Clines from Mitchell Pluto
SPIDERWAVES
Collaborative writing: Hazel & Steven Cline
Sun on my face; worm in my palm. Where is the tree I saw before I was born if not in your heart? A dancer pounds the sand into myriad dynasties of memory. Eruption of geometric solids from a hardening ground. Devastated again and again into life. Without an eclipse of the moon; Without the face I missed and without the soonness of the end. Satisfaction gave way to a pomegranate; and then the dancers in the sky, in the night, in the sand fuse via epilepsy. Shadows silver, and I find I have something to lose. Something, as in hat or muskrat, but in other words there are many things of which we are made of. Mountainous sheets of white sand, signing high notes inside, outside. What is a mountain if not the universe? All I can think of is…whale. All I can think of is whale, which is everything. Everything, blowing sheet metal kisses across aquatic dreamtime streams. Kiss, then the sands, kiss then wind. The river makes love as you fly from the waterfall to the ocean. Spiderwaves crashing in your ears, and wouldn’t you know it? A secret succumb to the drifts.
CATERWAULING
Collaborative writing: Hazel & Steven Cline
Impish sprouts, come now, rejoin the nature choir. Spout from belly, cast skin aside, rejoin the broken ends of hairway screaming. Become erect in thy tendrils, in thy vines, in thy flowering eyelids, eyelips. Scales, weatherworn, may become grey or spotted, may become a disease repeated. Repetitive formlessness may become eyeless. Liked a castaway grail, like a traveler without species or a lichen dripping, frothing from the tips of broken fingers. Inside Castle, the deepness sleeps. The deepness repeats, reaching longingly out through the ribcagebars that hold its will in check. Across swampmoat, a game of chess is played, and yes, a checkmate too. A matter of alligator flesh, weighs your worth on its scales. Firebreather, O firething, O fireeater, bring forth the charred pieces of moleblind contempt, thy master. And lay him here, unbroken on that breakening altar, his feetflesh pollinated by cold wind. But the wind will have none of it. Virgin the wind is and will remain, no matter how many times she is raped. Caterwauling is a way for millipedes to divide and seek out that onebrightmissingthing. O everfree! O everleaving! A soul’s void casts its own shadow, too, my friend. O overbearing openness! Such openness is evisceration. Is evisceration, or crushed and squirming eggplant. A call: come now, worm, come now wind, defend your keep! Atom and Electron, enemies, conspirators, corpuscular in their insane infancy. We shall become nematodes on this day, or we shall expire. Thus is the will of the organ defended. Thus is the desire of the flesh raised again.
When I bite down, my teeth spread fire. I bite down on tree, I bite down hard…a California, newly blackened. When I bite down on swimming pool? When I bite down on sea? I see the ships come and go in the night. From where do they come and wither do they go again? Where but the watery depths that hold the stars with a cargo such as that they leave at every doorstep and every grave. A ghost hand floating, a hand laid down, in a casket amongst friends. A weaponized hairplane, and a truth? Pearly truth? Pearly, yes, of the falsest kind, unlike the inky liquid left by the octopus my sister stepped on that summer when we were five or six. The luster of a pearl reflects the hungry gaze of the wanderer. But the unreflective black of closed eyes or submersion under the hungry waves shows the empty colors and flashes that call upward from eternity’s open veins…
LADYBUG LEVIATHAN
Collaborative writing: Hazel & Steven Cline
City of Cyber, inside belly of Panda. Inside panda-belly, squirming datanet suckers towards the base of your brain. Down flows the river of nerves, down winding, writhing around one another and the spine of this world. This planet called Ladybug Leviathan, this universe called Old Misery Guts. Once again this universe tells the story of the time when the slimesnake jacked in with his god cord, shivering electrical. And jacked off into the abyssal plains of the sordid, sacred animal brain of the metrosynaptic gecko. Everything teal here, everything teal or sometimes pink. And blood always purple, and blood rerouted through networks of laughter that rumble through those beautiful bowels that wailed and woke the world before worlds. Reprogram this panda, O history-keeper, O kelp-satisfied lizard of night’s mist. Open at last the lid behind the lid. Exsanguinate, expectorate, mark the spot where the psionic piston rotates. What, then, if that rotation should cease? What, then, if all the dark little spots behind your eyes should suddenly come to life?
I started drawing tarot cards as a way to deepen my relationship with and understanding of the characters and archetypes that people them. I went along with the fool on their journey, and together we struggled, died, were reborn, learned about life and ourselves, and started all over again.
A mockingbird arises from the edge of the foliage there where cosmic orders rush and it was when I felt the elongated step of the annelids in its pristine and minimal hollow in progress and I saw the infinite curtain where the stars cling the ones that it costs me now to read because the street forks this long avenue of my life where an hour saves me while the other carries a tombstone in her hand. Gregorian chant at burial liters of paint on my coffin since I summon the colors to accompany me in this Dionysian dance Well, I gave them life other life with shadows, with lights and halftones just how life really is and in its surreality with its reverse blade Well, I invoked them without geodesic dimensions there they settled their perfume that swells my soul that unfolds towards my underground kingdom.
Una calandria surge del canto del follaje allí donde se precipitan las órdenes cósmicas y fue cuando sentía el paso alargado de los anélidos en su prístina y mínima oquedad en progreso y vi el telón infinito donde se aferran los astros los que me cuesta ahora leer pues la calle se bifurca esta larga avenida de mi vida donde una hora me salva mientras la otra lleva una lápida en la mano.
Canto gregoriano en el sepelio litros de pintura sobre mi féretro ya que convoco a los colores a acompañarme en esta danza dionisíaca pues les di la vida, otra vida con sombras, con luces y medias tintas tal como es la vida en realidad y en su surrealidad con su hoja inversa pues los invoqué sin cotas geodésicas ahí asentaron su perfume que hincha mi alma que se desdobla hacia mi reino subterráneo.
Enrique de Santiago
Born in Santiago, Chile (1961). Visual artist, poet, researcher, essayist, curator and cultural manager. He studied a Bachelor of Art at the University of Chile and at the Institute of Contemporary Art (Chile).
Since 1984, he has exhibited in individual and group exhibitions, counting to his credit around more than 100 exhibitions.
He has edited five books: Fragile Transits Under the Spirals in 2012, with La Polla Literaria; Elegía a las Magas and the book essay: El Regreso de las Magas, both with Editorial Varonas. In 2018 he edited La Cúspide Uránica with editorial Xaleshem and Dharma Comunicaciones, and Travel Bitácora with Editorial Opalina Cartonera.
He has participated in various poetry anthologies, both in Chile and abroad. He has collaborated in the newspaper La Nación with articles on new media art, and in magazines such as Derrame, Escaner Cultural and Labios Menores in Chile, Brumes Blondes in Holland, Adamar from Spain, Punto Seguido from Colombia, Sonámbula from Mexico, Agulha de Brazil, Incomunidade de Portugal, Styxus de Rep. Czech, Canibaal de Valencia, Spain, Materika de Costa Rica and other printed and digital publications.
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Mitchell Pluto 