Plot

Yesterday I buried my mother. Two mothers. Maybe three, or four. I have had many mothers in the small hours of this modest and shrinking life. All of my mothers are tassels of foam threading mighty surf. All of my mothers are liberated and exiled to a single body-host and fugitive core. The passions of men are septic, and in need of drainage. And not just any drainage: mother-drainage. Mothers swallows cesspools and geyser them upward and outward in alchemized torrents intended to bathe stars. Mother-tongues perform rites on multiple levels. The stars wink gratefully. Mirages rage fruitfully, and I say this because here I am, burying my mother again, for the first and always time, there is no end to these burials, no cessation to the amount of mothers becoming funeral batter (the heat of the earth causing them to rise, to rise) … In truth, or in reality—choose your semantical poison—I have buried none of my mothers, not a single one, but I have rehearsed these burials in the cradle of story, I have made myself minister and undertaker, reciting the canticle (while imagining dirt engraving its signature under my nails): I buried my mother yesterday. If I were to start again, and here I start again, I might say—Yesterday I buried my mother. And she buried me. It was a mutual agreement, a tacit bond. There’s something about burying the mother who buries you that engenders hallucinogenic closeness. My mother and I become vivid and clear, near and dear to each other in our correspondent deaths, in our shared burial plots.

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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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