We Pause for Glacial Identification

It is the winter within, the writer dying, the chaos bible scored in ice, texts of veins, I mean, I think I mean, veins of text, veins and bulging whorls of text embedded in ice, and your body moving through space and time is a glacier, or so you imagine, but then you realize (at some point you will realize) that you are entombed within the hulking chrysalis of glacier, a slow-moving behemoth, a blue-white mausoleum, you are awed by its size and silence—and you are existing within it. Crazy. To realize you are cargo and passenger of this vessel, the ship on which you are traveling is a glacier, which makes sense, now that you consider the shape and texture of your perception glassily blurred, as if projecting through sheafs of warped and mumpy cellophane. There is no discipline in this. There is nothing for you to practice, to do. The glacier, densely benumbed in godlike grandeur, drifts along icy waters—your ship, your home, houseboat, that’s it, the glacier is your houseboat. Far, far away from tons and cities, from society’s pall and viscous scrim. Where are all the rapacious gazes? The rapists? No evil people, the philosopher once opined, only evil revelations. None of these recollections from your previous life, or previously imagined life, amount to anything. You have moved beyond the confines of memory. In other words, in different worlds: the government and its legislative capacities that Memory sets up in the self is now defunct. Or, your moving distance, defaulted you from its jurisdiction. Regime change can be as simple as dislocation.

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About John Biscello

Originally from Brooklyn, NY, writer, poet, performer, and playwright, John Biscello, has lived in the high-desert grunge-wonderland of Taos, New Mexico since 2001. He is the author of four novels, Broken Land, a Brooklyn Tale, Raking the Dust, Nocturne Variations, and No Man’s Brooklyn; 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 produced, full-length plays include: LOBSTERS ON ICE, ADAGIO FOR STRAYS, THE BEST MEDICINE, ZEITGEIST, U.S.A., and WEREWOLVES DON’T WALTZ.
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