Hips Don’t Lie

The hips don’t lie. They are the truth-telling giants, and the whistle-blowers transmitting through pirate radio. They are also the catacombs and weather satellites of one’s cumulative genealogy. When an old person falls and breaks their hip, it is not just their hip that needs mending, it is also a calcified psychic geography in need of healing. Accumulated history only needs one break, one fracture, a small opening, to find its own level in real-time. The torrent comes—the filed rejections, your daughter’s grief when she lost her first child, your husband’s infidelity, your glasses being swiped at and stomped on when the fight broke out (their three against your one), the colors of your grief and repentance and serial ineptitude running and running and running. Hips, when projected boldly into sex, or dance, carry out eulogy and fiesta all at once, a woozy New Orleans funeral march parceling out grief and joy in a single continuous movement, and you can’t help but feel lighter, a small bird announcing its delicate wings to the drizzles of flight.  

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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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