Author Archives: John Biscello

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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.

Clip

Posted on September 8, 2025 by John Biscello

In the short film released by the Civil Defense Department, a cheery reporter talks about the mannequins representing Mr. and Mrs. America. When the time for detonation comes, she, along with countless others, will gather six miles from Ground Zero, … Continue reading →

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Match

Posted on September 8, 2025 by John Biscello

In one of the Doomstown houses, scheduled to be destroyed by nuclear blast on May 5th, 1955, two mannequin women are lying in bed together. Who arranged these women? Who played matchmaker, and according to what script? Was this the … Continue reading →

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Godot in Vegas

Posted on September 8, 2025 by John Biscello

This just in: No one is waiting for Godot anymore. No one has the time or interest. Plus, no one knows who he, or Samuel Beckett is. The wastelands are even dryer, tubercular in their plot and scrape, and presently … Continue reading →

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Television Ghost

Posted on September 8, 2025 by John Biscello

The Television Ghost, considered one of TV’s first dramatic series (1931-1933), belongs to the spectral repository of lost media. Since television technology was in its infancy, the transmission projected a single static image—that of the “Ghost” draped in a white … Continue reading →

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Say What?

Posted on September 7, 2025 by John Biscello

Survival Town was created outside of Las Vegas for the express purposes of being destroyed. The town was populated by mannequin families, who were curated and arranged in homes to model and mimic middle-class American values, ideals, and leisure. Democracy, … Continue reading →

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Less Said

Posted on September 7, 2025 by John Biscello

I have no desire to sing tonight. This is the only line Samuel Beckett managed to write for a libretto which he abandoned. The smallest hours hold staggering volumes of silence.

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Night

Posted on September 7, 2025 by John Biscello

At night I go out, scorched and empty. I pool inside myself all day, every day, a sipping and flooding, and then I carry this out with me into the night. There is a hissing that I can hear out … Continue reading →

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Gazing Strip

Posted on September 5, 2025 by John Biscello

I am Beket, and this is my life, not in so many words, and in so many words. Voices, mirrors, masks. That’s what I barter and traffic in, my raison d’être, as the French would say. There are also long … Continue reading →

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Beket

Posted on September 5, 2025 by John Biscello

My name is Beket. That’s my first name, and my last. My mother was going to name me Becky, after some character in a novel she loved, but when she saw how silent I was as a baby (she said … Continue reading →

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Waves

Posted on September 5, 2025 by John Biscello

What is the difference between memory and fiction? What are the intersecting policies of their tenuous and subjective relationship? For example: You have a woman, a mother recalling her dead daughter. She sees her daughter playing on the beach, she … Continue reading →

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