Category Archives: Prose

Demasking is a Crime

Posted on November 8, 2019 by John Biscello

Signs everywhere: rectangular slabs of mildly glowing metal that warned in red lettering: Demasking is a crime. It was in the year _______ that a maskless society had ceased to exist. A decision was made by people who made decisions … Continue reading →

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These Glacial Times

Posted on November 8, 2019 by John Biscello

I have been in a coma now for sixty-seven days. No one reaches me anymore. And I don’t reach them. Everything that has to do with reaching—in, out—all of that is done. It is jazz that has lost its voice. … Continue reading →

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D’Arc Night of the Soul

Posted on October 31, 2019 by John Biscello

(For All Hallow’s eve, a “witch’s” tale) 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 upper lip into … Continue reading →

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From the Sorcerer’s Handbook

Posted on October 25, 2019 by John Biscello

Do not explain music Do not explain dreams the elusive penetrates everything You must know that everything rhymes —Wols   There is something deeply comforting about this, deeply reassuring. Everything rhymes. A universe of correspondences, of sequential richness, metaphysical jazz. … Continue reading →

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The Factory

Posted on October 15, 2019 by John Biscello

Review of Hiroko Oyamada’s award-winning debut novel, The Factory. The year was 1936, when an indefatigable tramp served as a working-class Virgil in guiding audiences through the hellscape of big business industry and assembly line madness. The tramp, of course, … Continue reading →

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Starstuff

Posted on October 6, 2019 by John Biscello

Mariko was a photographer of stars. It feels funny to put it that way. It sounds as if she photographed celebrities.She only took photos of stars in the night sky.  She said the stars were her real home and that’s … Continue reading →

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Mariko

Posted on October 6, 2019 by John Biscello

I knew from the beginning that Mariko was haunted, but there was nothing I could do about it. My only choice was to love her, and until the very end. I have five photographs left of Mariko. I burned all … Continue reading →

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Frost

Posted on September 30, 2019 by John Biscello

There is a specific tenor to dreaming in a silent and snowy land. It’s that place where your voice grows brighter, then brittle and glassy, before shattering into a choir of a thousand birds, and everywhere the echoes attempt to … Continue reading →

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What We Talk About When We Talk About Ghosts

Posted on September 29, 2019 by John Biscello

It began in a feral and unnamed country, which was the nerve-center of dreaming. Telephones wires hanging down like snipped umbilicals, like severed hyphens that had lost all sense of meaning and purpose. The telephone poles doubled as crucifixes. You … Continue reading →

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After Hours

Posted on September 18, 2019 by John Biscello

   Lenny Bruce, seated on a chipped wooden stool, cigarette dangling from his lips, slumping forward, shoulders slack. His mouth puckers, the cigarette jumps to attention, he draws in fiercely, then exhales a series of bluish halos that float and … Continue reading →

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