Out of the deeply forested genus and enclosure,
scotophobic—fear of the dark—
emerges the rawest most primal material
from which stories are called and founded,
blackly lacquered honey
staccato in its slow-drip molasses and narcotic salve,
keeping us calm archival company
through distress-signals
flooded and fired within.
In the latent
vernacular of gist—
mind breaths in space time
crystallized as rapt intimacies
give the dreaming voice
its human due
and proof of residence—
Fading tracks the ghostly course
of diminishing returns
within a poem’s lasting domain
and strident measure.
Now available to buy through Unsolicited Press, Barnes & Noble, Asterisim, Booktopia, ThriftBooks, Book Delico, and wherever book are sold.
Print edition available through Lost Telegram Press.
Audio-book edition (narrated by the author, with a preface by the publisher) available through Google Books, Booktopia, Audiobooks Now, Bookmate, Downpour, Libro F.M., Audiobooks.com, and many other outlets, including Lost Telegram Press.
“So many novels are built around control. Even when they deal with rupture, they shape it into something we can grapple with. Events lead somewhere. Meaning accumulates in a way that can be tracked. By the end, the reader understands not only what happened, but how to leave the book. No One Dreams in Color ignores that contract.
It begins with a disappearance, suggesting a trajectory. A missing filmmaker, a writer compelled to follow the trail, a remote town waiting to be entered and interpreted. The structure is familiar enough that you can feel yourself settling into it, preparing for the usual exchange: attention in return for clarity. That exchange never arrives, and that is what makes No One Dreams in Color so fascinating. Biscello does not give you what you expect from a novel.”– U.P.
Read the full review here:
https://www.unsolicitedpress.com/news/this-book-doesnt-resolve-thats-not-a-flaw
Solitude waxing blankly
in the company of words—
Moon’s forecast: warm, gospel, and fuzzy.
Clouds,
fleecy in glaring mass,
softly, softly,
the words tender themselves
to silence in passing.
It could be called Variations on Love,
how we find each other again
and again,
in different modes and phases,
nearness teased out of growth’s grinning desire
to story and multiply, to bring lives
into exquisite sync
and pulse—
This, our starstruck compass
and calling,
to find each other again
and again,
in waves of liminal enclosure.
Her body,
her body breaking in time,
a vivid stutter and scratch,
repeated in my mind’s amateur attempts
to braid or grasp
what amounts to sand in wind—
Life,
oh life,
a series of manic shutters
and twitches,
threaded to a sky’s sleepless passing
without custom or concern—
Her body,
tracked to memory
as fable and sorrow,
none of it lasting,
yet sublime nearness
when water meets its own level
in paired distances.
(Buon compleanno, Nonna Maggio!)
As a wounded bird,
forever hesitant in flight and gamble,
a parable unto your own tender cause,
your eyes gave watery way
to a trilling warble,
a brave and weary tune
that spoke soundly of hearts breaking
into smiles,
never too soon
or wasted.
(Mat ay Coney Island, way back when)
John Biscello 