As if Ghosts

She, as in ghosts, as in white-hot incubi with a seductive glassy not there stare, it bewitches and allures, bears melancholy freighted with scraped knees and mirror shards. There is a lucid unblinking poise, calculated reserve composed of crystal and quartz, she is not quite there, many moons removed, where is she exactly, she seems to be locked in a liminal state, between here and not there, seems to be modeling departure in a frieze, subtext becomes her in long prevailing silences, an aria fugitive and disembodied, the frigid etiquette of melancholy, beneath it all, there is a bubbling well of emotion, you can sometimes feel it in the lava-eyed flickering firing over her eyes with glaze, she doesn’t just look through you, she removes and excavates parts of me, she clinically harpoons and scoops out aspects of your interior, like chunks of grapefruit speared by a serrated spoon, this is what happens when she looks through you … she moves through, and rearranges you in the process. It is clean-seeming and silent. She doesn’t just look through me, it is as if her look makes freight and casualty of me and takes me back, way way back, to additional histories, small hours and hidden worlds unheard of, wounded throbbing seasons, she plants ghosts in me, as one would a series of revelations, and punctuated by chill they grow into echoes and wants. I would, with this look staying inside me to look me over and smolder, become bride to a lasting haunt, wedding bells on a distant shore laced with waves crashing. It was a disaster, and flirting with disaster, and skirting disaster all in one. I was in love.

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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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