Rizoma comestible, tubérculo sanador, yema axilar e interrumpida, epigeo brote conquistador de jengibre, lúpulo y cúrcuma medicinal. Rizoma incontrolable, inalcanzable, rebelde rizoma de venas de tallos subterráneos e ingobernables. También eres nutriente, órgano de reserva para las plantas y sostienes con tu amor horizontal los tallos perennes. No eres inmortal ya que mueres de vejez con el curso de los años; pero en verdad no mueres nunca, nuevos tallos inquietos brotan y siguen y se quiebran y siguen y los cortan y se doblen y siguen creciendo. Se aferran al suelo, ramificándose y creando esa red entrelazada de conexiones que los mantiene vivos y unidos. Rizoma difícil, no eres estático ni sistemático Tienes tantos puntos de vista y miras por todos los ojos la creación de la tierra.
La nieta del brujo
El pájaro austral canta debajo de la lluvia balanceándose en el árbol rezado y superviviente. Pica los limones y entona. Caen las semillas en la poza de agua que lava sus raíces; dedos rizomas: brotan flores cítricas que nadan. Llueve en el jardín del curandero. Don Manuel Antonio Lezana es sereno; sabe leer el idioma antiguo. El de la piedra. El tallado…
Oficio antiguo
Somos los cultivadores brujos, los de la marca en el cuerpo, nuestro oficio es la botánica de la sobrevivencia. Somos los gentiles, observamos la belleza en el micelio del auxilio. Vivimos muchas vidas: eres bienvenido a regar nuestras tierras.
Árbol brujo
Dormí en tu halo tardes de primavera, hice el amor con el destello del sol que penetraba tus hojas calientes. Subrayé mi nombre en la secreta elevación de tu mejilla. Es verdad tu belleza, es verdad al caer el agua en tu humedad y tu sudor de invierno. Comí cada hongo alucinógeno proveniente de tu mutación, me cobijé del sol neurálgico cuando mi piel ardía, descansé mis huesos sudorosos en tu sombra, canté el nacimiento de pájaros en nidos de pelo lobo. Aprendí el nuevo idioma de lo recóndito, de las profundidades, de lo mas sublime de las estrellas…
Recorrer los textos de Árbol brujo es aceptar el curso de un río; flotar sobre aguas que cambian de velocidad sin advertencia. Adentrarse en sus palabras significa estar dispuesto a habitar el micelio de la autora, recorrer sus hebras y vivir en sus espacios. Buscar nuevas entradas y salidas, pues como dice Victoria Riquelme: «nunca ha de cerrarse ningún camino». Un rizoma de lenguaje feroz y sensual será lo que encontrarán en estas páginas.
When I read Richard Gessner’s Voyeur Rising I imagined the story as an adult cartoon with liminal existential qualities. Voyeur Rising reminds me of Vladimir Nabokov’s use of an unreliable narrator who is found in most current social media video and reels. This collective trick usually deceives the viewer with a decoy. This is the place where Gessner’s work lurks, to induce the peripheral mind while feeding the predatory eye. Here we see the ultimate conflict and fantasy of the Freudian id haunting the masculine mind. A pleasure principle with an intrusive desire to poach voluptuous women without any commitment- but to squirt sperm, to clone more succulent women so they are everywhere. The fantasy has boundaries in Gessner’s character who is aware of his masculine delusion, that every women he find’s attractive isn’t a possession but an unfulfilled wish. All this takes place by the primordial ocean, a surface alive with waves.
-Mitchell Pluto
Strategically positioning his beach chair, pretending to be reading a daily newspaper, Joey Genauski, nonchalant, invisible, just by chance, settles in a tight rectangle of sand bordering the burgundy beach towels of two 19 year old college girls the age of his granddaughter.
The girls, an ash blonde, and a brunette with auburn highlights, have soft buttery skin, shapely, wide hipped—all curvaceous splendor—
Perfect brown bodies striped with pale tan lines sharply outlining pale pink asses and naturally large breasts jiggling slightly in the warm breeze of early summer.
The tan lines form a pale faded triangle V of panty line extending upwards. From butt crack to lower back, panty lines curving around thighs to below belly buttons—traces of cast of bikini no longer worn.
Gradations of pale pink skin merging to olive, cinnamon, golden brown, pale breasts encircled with D cup outlines of frilly brassieres. Burnt Sienna areoles and nipples a darker shade of brown than their overall tans.
Crisp yellow and gold designer bikinis, light summer dresses, brassieres. And panties are strewn across towels covered with tubes of sun screen, Purses, car keys, fruit, sandwiches cold drinks, a paperback of classic 19th century literature and a current glossy fashion magazine glistening in the sun.
Furtively, through dark sunglasses, Joey Genauski gazes longingly towards the girls’ spread open legs. Their Smoothly shaven vaginas, A reddish salmon pink, are soothed with cooling aloe vera. Blue and white beach umbrellas with a swordfish logo line the beach Landscape. Its a Saturday afternoon in early June, the weekend crowds work to Joey’s advantage, giving him an excuse to sit close to single women without being obvious about it. The crowds camouflaging his true intentions, allowing him to move frequently, unnoticed by the morally reproving beach patrol seeking to squelch his habit of constantly wandering the beach in quest of a perfect view.
Other voyeurs, Joey’s competition, watch the beach entrance from a distance, waiting for the arrival of young ladies, single or in groups. Approaching the ladies after they have gotten naked under their beach umbrellas.
Most women strip naked, but some keep their bikini bottoms on. Some wear Brazilian string bikinis, flesh toned thongs, almost nude, but not quite. Pale maidens wiggle out of floral print summer dresses, shorts, and candy striped one piece bathing suits.
Voluptuous brown girls peel off demure, white see-through-when-wet suits, revealing all to bulging male eyes, looking, gawking, looking away— Diaphanous mesh panties slide down svelte hips, falling to sand. Brightly colored, fancy brassieres pop off as delicate fingers reach behind unhooking clasps shining in the sun, catching the eye of a seagull flying in blue skies above.
Secret cameramen get up in the nooks and crannies of spread eagled women half asleep in the sun. Joey leaves the two girls, vanishing into thick masses of beach regulars, middle aged, tanned and leathery, marking their territory with windscreens, coolers and little plastic flags poked in the sand.
In Joey’s absence, competing beach voyeurs, some bold, well hung, smooth talkers, will succeed in engaging the ash blonde and brunette with auburn highlights in a lively conversation. Mastering bare body language a virile stud will advance to slow massage, rubbing baby oil of their perfect bodies glistening in the sun.
Slick voyeurs who remain at the top of the food chain will return to the beach, summer after summer, appearing like clockwork as in the legendary return of swallows to Mission San Juan Capistrano—
Their pick up routines with the ladies will remain similar and predictable year after year, decade after decade. Enticing the girls with superficial big talk of financial conquest, fancy cookies and little airplane bottles of alcohol.
In the tidal pools of voyeur nursery school, untested new generations of voyeurs emerge like baby sea turtle hatchlings making a mad dash seaward—
climbing the slippery slope of a succulent female ass just over the horizon,
Joey Genauski wanders into a gaggle of girls taking it all off for the first time-
In the distance, randy couples frolic in the surf, avoiding the June Jellyfish in the waves, out at sea, fishing boats come in close to shore, catching a panoramic eyeful of skin.
“Voyeur Rising” (C) 2022 Richard Gessner
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. Richard wrote The Conduit and Other Visionary Tales of Morphing Whimsy. He lives in Montclair, New Jersey.
The Conduit and Other Visionary Tales of Morphing WhimsyAudible
THIS WRITING IS AN AUTHORIZED DUPLICATION WITH PERMISSION AND EXPRESSED CONSENT
Mitchell Pluto 