Category Archives: Prose

Borneo on Mars

Posted on August 11, 2022 by John Biscello

There is the glass ashtray. The mangled cigarettes. The hotel room. The window open with the breeze coming in, ruffling the curtains. The breeze is lace fingers. Tiny fingers. There is the unevenly applied lipstick. The besieged housemaid. There is … Continue reading →

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Cherry and Claudia

Posted on August 11, 2022 by John Biscello

She asked me to touch her. Down there. It’s been so long, she said. I feel like a coffin. Just use your fingers. I was reluctant. When she said—It’s just your hand, it’s not you—I thought—It’s just my hand, not … Continue reading →

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Sideshow

Posted on August 10, 2022 by John Biscello

The Great Snakewalker, holding a yellow umbrella with splashy red polka dots that conjures the notion of enormous blood platelets, balancing on a tightrope comprised of tail-tied snakes with flicking tongues, descendants of Ouroboros, and she the Great Snakewalker does … Continue reading →

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Strange Angels

Posted on August 10, 2022 by John Biscello

The days fly into the blue and disappear, and your mind, in its memory-making, contains the disappeared days as film archive. I want to set fire to the archive. Burn all the films. Watch the celluloid twist and incinerate. I … Continue reading →

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Metronome

Posted on August 10, 2022 by John Biscello

It doesn’t take much to become days of mourning. This world provides plenty of opportunities to convert one into days of mourning. Then days of mourning becomes weeks of mourning. Months of mourning. Years. But it begins with days of … Continue reading →

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In the Catacombs of Grief

Posted on August 10, 2022 by John Biscello

In the catacombs of grief, she wandered. She wandered, without thirst, without hunger. This frightened her. Had she lost her basic humanity? Why had she created such elaborate labyrinths? Say that ten times fast, she said to herself. At least … Continue reading →

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Aria

Posted on August 9, 2022 by John Biscello

You are at a masquerade ball that takes place at Club Infinity, and you notice a lonely woman standing in the corner, her entire body breathes loneliness like strange music thickening the air, which in essence thickens the plot … … Continue reading →

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Window for Two

Posted on August 9, 2022 by John Biscello

Do you plan to get up today Max? No Marge, you? I am up. You plan on staying up? No, just wanted a spot of tea. That’s very British of you. What is? A spot of tea . . . … Continue reading →

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To a Young Writer Whom I Have Yet to Meet or May Never Know

Posted on August 9, 2022 by John Biscello

Finding and following your own voice is vitally important.  Yet that idea can be extended to: finding and following your own voices.  They are inside you.  Many of them.  Who knows why they are there, and from where they came.  … Continue reading →

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Ghostwritten Posthumously

Posted on August 9, 2022 by John Biscello

  Now that he was dead, everything was different.  No more desire or ambition, no more pressures or expectations.  All of that had gone the instant his human life had expired.    As a ghost, at first he wondered how … Continue reading →

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