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.

Beckett’s Sonata

Posted on March 31, 2025 by John Biscello

A hatless pilgrim, roving this way and that, a man embodying scat (in every sense of the word), wandering through starched cardstock fields in search of a stingy flower, proud, pistil-engraved, the flower’s gullet scorched by streaks of sungold (this, … Continue reading →

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Sphinx

Posted on March 28, 2025 by John Biscello

Convicted sphinx to beguiling raptures, and time-spanned sync-holes, literary enigma, Clarice Lispector, understood keenly the tolling of ruptures within, sowing breath’s metered and fasting threads to the fractional seethe of holy and lent.

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In Praise of Patti Smith

Posted on March 28, 2025 by John Biscello
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Because the Night

Posted on March 27, 2025 by John Biscello

In lyrical, abetted praise of Patti Smith, white witch torchbearer of punk mettle and lightning bones— She, wildly grown and gutter-starred, remains in love and swelling thrall to the Romantic timbre and clash of Rimbaud’s unrelenting wake, or Plath’s penning … Continue reading →

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Bolano and Me

Posted on March 26, 2025 by John Biscello

Last night I dreamed of Roberto Bolaño. Or he of me. We were sitting at a dimly lit café, a subterranean plot of a café, and Bolaño was drinking chamomile tea. In the latter stages of his life chamomile tea … Continue reading →

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Seal

Posted on March 20, 2025 by John Biscello

Visionaries elope with themselves. Time-lapses of a shotgun wedding in a placeless tent ministered by the migrating wind and its sideshow cabal of voices— In the company of echoes, you kneel, and grow favorably intimate with unheard of distances closing … Continue reading →

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Outlaw Country

Posted on March 19, 2025 by John Biscello

“Outlaw Country,” an excerpt from my novel, None So Distant, published in Spare Parts Literary Magazine as part of their From the Desk series: Reports of fringy lore on lost highways. Point-counterpoint in a twangy battle of wills. Stay tuned. … Continue reading →

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Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

Posted on March 18, 2025 by John Biscello

And on the eighth day, unseasonably warm, the hounds basking in hell, modeling balmy, crotch-rot bikinis in Gilead, called out— Please, God, let our leader mirror starkly our deepest fears and shadows, let him be as I, for I am … Continue reading →

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Metamorphosis Variations

Posted on February 24, 2025 by John Biscello

My fiction piece, “Metamorphosis Variations” (inspired by the first sentence of Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis”) now appearing in 3:AM magazine. Excerpt below: As I awoke one morning, from a night of discarded syringes and cough syrup, I found myself transformed … Continue reading →

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Conjugal

Posted on February 19, 2025 by John Biscello

Hoarfrost mingling with spring dew– Hunger, sated to bloom.

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