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.

Scarecrow

Posted on November 13, 2024 by John Biscello

You got to ask yourself: Do you want to fuck Judy Garland? Or do you want to become her? I wasn’t prepared for this line of questioning. I was eleven at the time. Or twelve. I think, eleven. My mother’s … Continue reading →

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The Trial

Posted on November 12, 2024 by John Biscello

Enlightened, perhaps. God-engorged hormones, maybe. Regardless of why, Joan, you were the rebel prototype long before James Dean zipped up a red jacket, or Marlon Brando mumbled and curled his upperlip into a stylized totem. Before Louise Brooks and Josephine … Continue reading →

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Veils

Posted on November 12, 2024 by John Biscello

Invention was your solitude and twin, wasn’t it, Miss Nin? The calculated manner in which you spread secret pages, like silk violet capes or fringed shawls, promising an air of mystery and desire. You enabled the cause of symmetry, so … Continue reading →

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Fante and Bandini

Posted on November 12, 2024 by John Biscello

Inferiority might have been your first memory. Though you were born on American soil, stubbornly planted there, the chinked chains of immigration clanked and rattled, Marley-style, tightening around your throat, as you butted your head against the scabby base of … Continue reading →

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The Sorceress

Posted on November 11, 2024 by John Biscello

To be a mother, and to double as a dark sorceress, a cleaver of dried bones, could not have been easy. Especially in the 1950s. They burned witches then, as well as reds and blacks and faggots, and other things … Continue reading →

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How Tomorrow Moves

Posted on November 11, 2024 by John Biscello

   It was a matter of helium-speak, and tomorrow-talk, and bright ribbons of noise amounting to nothing.    We, hanging out on the street-corner, conducting ping-pong volleys and raps, ferocity and verve, building ourselves up—who we were and were not, … Continue reading →

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Out of Silence

Posted on November 10, 2024 by John Biscello

Beckett spoke about it: the inability to keep quiet. The inability to not say stories, to not make stories, to not find oneself shaped according to stories fitted to shifting forms. Beckett, with gallows irony, talked plenty about silences. He … Continue reading →

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We Pause for Glacial Identification

Posted on November 10, 2024 by John Biscello

It is the winter within, the writer dying, the chaos bible scored in ice, texts of veins, I mean, I think I mean, veins of text, veins and bulging whorls of text embedded in ice, and your body moving through … Continue reading →

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Memory and Fiction

Posted on November 10, 2024 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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Monkeys and Barrels

Posted on November 9, 2024 by John Biscello

None of it was going anywhere. It had been a while. Both things were true. Both could be beginnings. So let’s go with both: None of it was going anywhere. It had been a while. I felt like a dehydrated … Continue reading →

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