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.

Pinafore

   Let’s start with the photo, the comic melodrama in which you, perfectly staged, are wearing a blue pinafore dress, your dark hair gagged in pigtails, mouth heavily lipsticked, cheeks cherubically rouged, your eyes two flashing ovals of abyss-pooling licorice, … Continue reading

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No One Dreams in Color

Coming April 2026 from Unsolicited Press. Synopsis:Man Vanishes Without a Trace. This, the dramatic headline which stirs Andrew DiBenedetto’s curiosity, and initiates a life-changing course. The vanished man is Paul Kirby, whose nine-minute film, Wendigo—the only film Kirby ever made—was … Continue reading

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Net Worth

   Memory slips through one’s fingers, an aggrieved net unable to hold sea or time. Everything floats by and through as intangible, ephemeral.    How to achieve fluency and accuracy of memory, of memory loss? I do not know.    … Continue reading

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Shard

In a house of mirrors, every reflection is an indirect representation of an illusion, as misperceived recognition of the source.

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Screen Test

Memory. How we amass and compile what equates to an archival collection of footage which constitutes an identity, a life … in private screening rooms, we view ourselves, scenes, episodes, and settle ourselves into what comprises identity. Yet there is … Continue reading

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Straight Out of Toronto

My interview on All My Books, a podcast aired on MET Radio (Toronto Metrpolitan University) is now streaming. It was fun getting to discuss creative process, indie publishing, inspiration and artistic influences, and I had an opportunity to read an … Continue reading

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Metrics

Dust is time’s response to dreaming. Dreams–desolate, unmade, spectral—wafting as winds carry out the ceremonial twitch of pallbearing.

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Last Picture Show

   Does time-resin sting our eyes? Does desolation call forth our most solitary angels? Our loneliest most homesick angels? Desolation allows to become a vagrant, rooted in blessed nobody, divergently attuned to an original script. The wind writes in the … Continue reading

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Interior

   It was a town caught in the pinwheeling stasis between living and dying, between chrysalis and mortuary. I want to examine why it is I am drawn to places like this, why I always return to this specific feeling … Continue reading

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Niche

   Let me show you, she said.    She proceeded to open her stomach, almost as if she were made from wood or metal, something not flesh, and it cleanly opened to reveal a dark chamber.    I stood there, … Continue reading

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