Author Archives: John Biscello

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About John Biscello

Originally from Brooklyn, NY, novelist, poet, performer, playwright and filmmaker, John Biscello, has lived in the high-desert grunge-wonderland of Taos, New Mexico since 2001. He is the author of six novels, Broken Land, a Brooklyn Tale, Raking the Dust, Nocturne Variations, No Man’s Brooklyn, The Last Furies, and No One Dreams in Color; 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 plays have been staged and performed both nationally and internationally.

Variations on a Theme

Posted on October 8, 2026 by John Biscello

Memory as cosplay in a dark room. Others cosplay with you, perpetuating a game and masquerade, rituals membered, by which we find ourselves assuming patterns and assimilating forms. Alone, again alone, and at once alone, where others, and their penchant … Continue reading →

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Last Picture Show

Posted on October 8, 2026 by John Biscello

Does time-resin sting our eyes? Does desolation call forth our most solitary angels? Our loneliest most homesick angels? Desolation allows one 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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Vampires

Posted on October 8, 2026 by John Biscello

I walked to the train station at night. I was going to drive. It was a hot day. I had already been walking out in the sun, and I thought—just drive to the train station. But when it was time … Continue reading →

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Travel Notes

Posted on October 8, 2026 by John Biscello

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 of … Continue reading →

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Flint

Posted on October 8, 2026 by John Biscello

And death shall have no dominion. How could it? It’s only a match with an overblown reputation.

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Outerwear

Posted on October 8, 2026 by John Biscello

The dark is the clothing in which our ghosts animate themselves.

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Paper Cuts

Posted on October 8, 2026 by John Biscello

 In the preferred company of words, a slow monarchy and infirmary is formed. Words paper over silence and wounds. Something about the dark blesses us.

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Neurodivergent Rabbits

Posted on October 8, 2026 by John Biscello

There’s no one left to finger, no one left to blame. Someone sang that. I wish I had sung that. I didn’t. I echo. I am echoes proliferating like genetically disturbed rabbits. Maybe neurodivergent rabbits copulating is a better term, … Continue reading →

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Sound of Silence

Posted on October 8, 2026 by John Biscello

In Federico Fellini’s film, 8 ½, the protagonist, Guido Anselmo, the cinematic avatar of Fellini, says—I have nothing to say, yet I am determined to say it. We mime silence by kissing words on the mouth.

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Whistle Stop

Posted on October 8, 2026 by John Biscello

It is a lonely road. The road made of words. The word stay put. The feelings don’t. The words crystallize, become the flambeed edges of something soft in the center. It is a struggle within, and a turn-on, mud-wrestling false … Continue reading →

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