Category Archives: Prose

Between Stations

Posted on November 9, 2019 by John Biscello

   I was on the subway platform waiting for the train when I spotted a thin girl in torn jeans and bright green tank-top walking in my direction. Her hair was a bushel of unruliness. As the girl drew nearer … Continue reading →

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Anya and the Dark

Posted on November 9, 2019 by John Biscello

Remember when we were kids and we’d sometimes have sleepovers and listen to the dark together? That’s what you called it, Anya, listening to the dark. Sometimes we’d pretend to be camping. We’d set up a tent and eat candy … Continue reading →

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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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