I don’t tell him there is no such thing as Claudia Lemon, she’s invented, he knows nothing about Clarise Lermontov, my ghost, my first country, there is no Clarise, only Claudia Lemon, and there is the young girl who loved squeezing lemon onto oysters, the oysters were still alive, eyeless, that’s what I remember about that little girl remembering, they’re eyeless, and I’d squeeze lemon onto the eyeless grammar of their forms and watch them writhe and think—this is life—lemon being squeezed onto eyeless things that will be eaten. That young girl was annoyingly philosophical. Her entire body was made of questions.
Originally from Brooklyn, NY, novelist, poet, performer, playwright and filmmaker, John Biscello, has lived in the high-desert grunge-wonderland of Taos, New Mexico since 2001.
He is the author of six novels, Broken Land, a Brooklyn Tale, Raking the Dust, Nocturne Variations, No Man’s Brooklyn, The Last Furies, and No One Dreams in Color; a collection of stories, Freeze Tag, two poetry collections, Arclight and Moonglow on Mercy Street; and a fable, The Jackdaw and the Doll, illustrated by Izumi Yokoyama. He also adapted classic fables, which were paired with the vintage illustrations of artist, Paul Bransom, for the collection: Once Upon a Time, Classic Fables Reimagined. His plays have been staged and performed both nationally and internationally.
