Category Archives: Uncategorized

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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Ow, She Said. And Wow.

Posted on November 7, 2019 by John Biscello

She stared at the solitary gull perched on a craggy rock. The sea, like undulating slates of purplish steel, or bruised rust, while a glaring wound of a sunset poured scarlet ribbons from its Martian gash. The gull flies away, … 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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Night at the Opera

Posted on October 25, 2019 by John Biscello

At first there was darkness, and there had always been darkness. Then the stars turned on. And music played, as if silky notes drifting through a night-cloth dome of windows, and in this way wonder entered the scene. Wonder mated … 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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October’s Bones

Posted on October 21, 2019 by John Biscello

In honor of the 50th anniversary of Jack Kerouac’s “death-day” departure for roads unknown. When I was a young man, a budding scribe eager to blossom white fire, and scabbed lotuses, you meant the world to me. You exposed me … 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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Free Play

Posted on October 7, 2019 by John Biscello

We live in a world of alchemy and swing, a freeform board game for sounding and experiment, and anyone that tells you any different has simply forgotten how to engage the play of their lives, or sow the grit, resin … Continue reading →

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