Crumbs

Posted on December 16, 2025 by John Biscello

   That’s him , yeah. That’s right, every day, from late morning to dusk, he sits on that bench and waits for her. I don’t know who she was. His love who left him. Or died. Disappeared. There are all kinds of stories. No one knows the truth. Except him. He comes every day with a brown bag lunch. A sandwich and a thermos filled with … I think filled with coffee. He eats the sandwich slowly. So slowly … its hurts me to watch him eating that sandwich. I can feel his loneliness in the way he eats … know what I mean? Maybe it’s just me. Because I see him every day. Yeah, I sit on this bench, opposite his. We’ve never spoken. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know I exist. I come here for my own reasons. Not that a girl left me or died or disappeared or anything like that. My reasons are … I don’t know, I guess you’d call them non-specific. Look, look, he’s taking out the sandwich. Watch how he unwraps it. Slowly, methodically. Like something fragile. Something about that … it gets to me. Do you understand? And the way he feeds pieces of bread to the pigeons. It’s just … watch, watch. Nothing? Really? Maybe it’s just me. Maybe because I see him every day. Maybe because … I don’t know. And the girl. I always think about her. What if one day she shows up? What would it be like if I come here and I don’t see the old man, if there is no sandwich and no thermos, no slow careful eating … what if I didn’t have this hope and loneliness to share with the old man? If she came back … what would become of us?

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Giant Killer

Posted on December 16, 2025 by John Biscello

   The first thing Josie thought—He looks like Hemingway.

   The second thing—He reminds me of my grandfather.

   Knowing that Sir James (which was how he had introduced himself with a dramatic flourish—I, my dear, am Sir James) had had enough, Josie avoided making eye contact. She shifted her attention to the rack of glasses set near the sink.

   With a marksman’s precision, Sir James caught Josie’s eye in the mirror posted on the wall behind the bar.

   My dear, excuse me … may I have another drink?

   Josie had worked as a bartender for almost ten years, and knew the Politeness Ploy well: speak softly, in a measured tone of kindness and restraint, so as to divert the bartender’s attention away from your state of inebriation. Unfortunately, for Sir James, while his tone was polite, his words were thick and soupy.

   Continuing to work a rag around the rim of a glass, Josie’s gaze met Sir James’s in the mirror, and she said—Sorry, Sir James, I can’t serve you anymore alcohol. Would you like a Coke or iced tea … or something to eat?

   Sir James’s features pinched tightly, and he wrinkled his nose as if Josie’s suggestions smelled really bad. He leaned his weight into the bar and splayed his elbows on the oak counter. His head was slightly bowed, chin bucking toward his throat, eye more than halfway closed. He remained totemically fixed in this position, and Josie wondered if he had fallen asleep or was tangled in thought. Then, as if an alarm had suddenly gone off, Sir James snapped to attention, stiffening his posture, eyes widening, his index finger shooting up like a flare-signal, and in fuzzy faraway voice, asked—May I have another, my dear?

    Josie turned and briefly locked eyes with Sir James: his look cueing heightened desperation.

   In a firm and parental tone—That’s all for tonight, Sir James. You’ve had enough. Okay?

   Sir James smiled, revealing nicotine-stained teeth—No, my dear, it’s not okay.

   He paused, a leaden slug of a pause. Josie continued wiping the glass in her hand.

   But, Sir James went on, it’s okay. It’s not okay, but it’s okay.

   Josie nodded and issued a slight smile. Some of the other female bartenders Josie had worked with never smiled after a certain time of night. Smiling after a certain hour at certain bars was too risky. Josie thought this rule too severe and had never adopted it.

   Sir James rocked back and forth on his stool as if being tugged at by phantom hands. Then he stopped tottering and began tapping out an uneven rhythm on the counter with his fingertips.

   Josie stole glances at him in the mirror. The snow white beard like a winter animal covering most of his face. The blue eyes, loose and jiggly, like two small fish swimming in separate tanks. The flush-pinkness of his complexion threaded by broken blue veins.

   Sir James stopped drumming on the counter, and said—Do you want to know why it’s not okay, Jenny?

   Josie.

   Sorry, my dear … Josie. Do you want to know why it’s not okay, Josie?

   Sir James paused, giving Josie a chance to ask why. Josie turned to face him but said nothing.    

   Again Sir James raised his index finger, high and administrative, and said—It’s not okay because the giants will be back later. It’s okay for now, but later when the giants return and I’m not ready for them … it won’t be okay. Two things I’ve learned: it’s never enough and they always come back.

   With that statement, Sir James flattened his palms on the counter, rose from his stool, and strode out of the bar without looking back. It all happened in one unbroken motion, what could be termed a graceful exit.

   Josie looked at the clock: 12:26. She wondered if she had done the right thing in not giving him another. She also wondered at what time the giants would return.

   He could be my grandfather, Josie thought, and the distance between that and he is my grandfather was not as far as she had imagined.

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My So-Called Life as a Cartoon

Posted on December 16, 2025 by John Biscello

   Being a cartoon is not all it’s cracked up to be. Don’t get me wrong, when I first made the conversion from human to cartoon, I considered myself the luckiest sonofagun on the face of the earth. All my human frailties and limitations were gone, and I thought of myself as fully liberated. I could throw myself in front of a steam roller (which I often did, just for kicks), get flattened, then blow into my thumb and re-inflate myself. I jumped off skyscrapers and walked away, unscathed. I was able to execute taffy-esque contortions with my cooperative cartoon body. I was no longer bound by the laws that governed the physical human world. Free, right? Not exactly.

   Yes, I could vault from a tall building fully confident that death would not claim me, yet a small mysterious something inside me died after those falls. And what I noticed, as those tiny deaths accumulated, sort of like kinks and crimps in my cartoon-gummy stomach—I was driven to do more and more outrageous things. That is, my need for cartoon-dramatic effects and actions intensified. I had to fiercely assert my cartoonishness, lest that growing fear—am I really as impervious as I think am?—would sink its claws into me and not let go.

   For those who care to know—my cartoon alter-ego is Willis the Wolf. Who, exactly, was I before I became a cartoon? That’s a good question. I have forgotten my human name, and most of my human memories. There are some scattered bits and pieces, fragments wrapped in haze. It’s sort of like seeing a disconnected run of film clips through a foggy lens. I would like to say that I don’t miss my name or memories at all, but that is not true. There is a nagging curiosity, an under-the-skin splinter that subtly announces it presence. If that splinter could talk, what I might say: As long as I am here, under your skin, you will wonder who you are and what you’ve been missing as a human being.

   Lately, the urge has grown stronger for me to abandon my cartoon life, to shed Willis’s thick and heavy fur. But how? How to get back to my pre-cartoon form?

   I don’t know the answer, but I do know that I’ve started acting differently. I no longer throw myself in front of steamrollers, or off of skyscrapers. I no longer seek out accidents or commit frivolous “suicides.” I have started acting as I imagined I would if I were human. With concern and regard for my body and well-being. A respectful nod to mortality, and a toning-down of the dramatic and exaggerated. While I don’t know if the new choices I’m making will help me get back to my original human form, the other morning, when looking in the mirror, I noticed that I had shed a significant amount of fur. Enough that the bright pink flesh beneath was exposed.

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Setting

Posted on December 15, 2025 by John Biscello

He notices the dark red lipstick on the rim of the glass, displaying a half-moon smudge. For an instant, his vision moves beyond the glass and settles on the inner lapel of the jacket she’s wearing, comparing its brighter red to that of the lipstick.  

She turns her bare slender fingers, the index and middle one, around the stem of the glass, slowly rotating it. The movement, a subtle one, magnetizes his attention to her fingernail polish: a caramelized burgundy.

She releases the stem, retracting her fingers, the outside of her hand grazing the edge of the table as her hand withdraws. The table is covered by a white linen tablecloth. There is a votive candle, unlit, inside of a crystal fixture, which has textured grooves cut vertically into its design. Her hand is placed palm down at almost exactly the midway point between the candle and the glass. She inverts the fingers on her other hand, slightly, as she raises her hand to mouth and clears her throat, hiccupping a cough.

He scratches the underside of his chin, using the edge of his thumbnail. She notices the kernels of fresh stubble darkening his chin. When he rests his hands, he folds them neatly, directly in front of where his abdomen and the table meet, then quickly disengages one hand from the other and coughs dryly into a cupped palm.

The waiter comes over. She acknowledges the waiter with a smile. He acknowledges the waiter with a slight nod. The waiter asks them if they are ready to order.

He scans her eyes to see if she’s planning to respond, and her eyes briefly meets his, then her gaze skittishly jumps to a different sight, that of a busboy carefully arranging silverware on a table, before she returns to the waiter and says—No, I won’t be staying.

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Locomotive

Posted on December 15, 2025 by John Biscello

   You didn’t dream her, you who are slowly climbing aboard a locomotive, being watched, so you feel, by whom? The needling press and burn of eyes on your back, itchy hot collar, you scratch, you cough, you take a page from Orpheus, turn back—no one there—you continue boarding the locomotive, the year advertising itself as 1923, but really, you know….

   You didn’t dream her, negative space encompassing worlds within worlds … even now it’s hard to fathom the depths as you tentatively make your way to your seat, foot clumsily thumping the maroon valise of the woman seated in AB, you are AA—excuse me, I’m sorry, you say and smile—AB smiles back—it’s okay…. In your seat, you settle in, consider the long distance ahead, it’s good to finally be in your seat, settled, yes a long distance ahead, you will be even more comfortable when you take your overcoat off, but you will wait, not wanting to disturb the lady in AB, not so soon after….

   You could not have dreamed her, the scent of perfume modeling its tiny stabs therefore olfactory demands—take notice—so you close your eyes, inhale, the immediacy of sweet pangs overlaid with the memory of faraway wife, which compels you to look out the window (your eyes still closed): tall grass, chapped woodsheds, reigning billboards, towers of stacked tires, everything there and then gone, falling behind so fast, time as hybrid zephyr and gremlin—grass, woodsheds, billboards, tires—there and then gone and then repeated differently, same as you aboard a locomotive, 1923, Orpheus, looking back, where did she go, you find yourself dreaming

of the shadow of your hand moving across her skirted thigh, producing fear-based pleasure-chills in your fingertips, ghosts with typewriter teeth, and this lady (AB) and you (AA), find yourselves on track to a most salacious nowhere, hurtling with dewy intent across a country that no longer exists (tall grass, brown milk-freckled cows, scabbed billboards, paint-deprived fences), and in this land of honey and shadows it is her neck, new, that you are kissing … her lips, new, that you are kissing … her breasts, new, that you are kissing … her navel, new, you kissing … it is you, new, because you have slotted yourself in that nubile interstice between dreaming and not dreaming, and aboard a locomotive everything falls behind so fast fading into past, meaning you are always in regressive pursuit of distances that reject closure or attainment,

you who has found your longing a cheat code on the lips of a stranger.  

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Lucky 13 in Long Beach

Posted on December 12, 2025 by John Biscello

Thank you in advance to Lucky 13 Gallery for hosting what will be a second event for The Last Furies during Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend in January 2026 (the first will take place at Reverie Bookstand on January 17th).

I am excited to reconnect with my creative compadre, Heather Ross, the cover artist for The Last Furies, as the event will feature a reading and book-signing, and a salon-style discussion with me and Heather about storytelling and visual art (and, most definitely, David Lynch, and our shared love for his artistry).

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A Moveable Feast

Posted on December 12, 2025 by John Biscello

   The first time I saw Hemingway he was seated at a table on his terrace overlooking the train station. It was raining that day and I was waiting on the platform opposite the terrace. I chanced to look up and saw a man—firm and solid in his movements, sporting a dark push-broom mustache, wearing a white terry-cloth robe—slide open a glass door and step onto the terrace. He removed the newspaper, which was tucked under his arm, and held it over his head to shield himself from the rain as he made his way from the doorway to the table. Later, upon reflection, I found it strange that a man like Hemingway—a bruiser, a tough guy, a man’s man who self-consciously advertised his machismo—would place a newspaper over his head to avoid getting wet. The walk from the doorway to the table was maybe three feet, meaning he would get wet for a second or two—why so careful?

The raindrops fell in slanting dashes, like finely rendered slits in the air. In between these slits, a torn picture composed itself: a man seated at a table, beneath the dome of green umbrella, newspaper fixed at short distance from his face, no sign or emotion of shift in his expression as he scanned the day’s news. Before flipping to a new page, he would ruffle the paper a few times, what struck me an habitual tic. I gazed at this man and didn’t know it was Hemingway until Hadley came out carrying a tray of food, and she made her way from the doorway to the table without covering her head. Hadley, like Hemingway, was wearing a terry-cloth bathrobe, except hers was yellow. She gave her husband a nod and slight smile and placed the tray on the table, as Hemingway set down the pipe he had just started smoking, rose, and pecked Hadley on the cheek. I’m not sure why it registered at that exact moment, but I lucidly understood that it was Hemingway and Hadley who, inexplicably, had wound up out of time and place, and were living in an apartment that bordered the station where I caught the train every day. Seeing the two of them, together, in the rain, on the terrace, gave me a quiet hopeful feeling.

   I savored the scene, as I waited for the train which would take me to my girlfriend’s apartment in the city, if indeed she was still my girlfriend. She had told me that she didn’t know if she could do it anymore, if she wanted to do it, and I told her I understood, and in a way I did, same as in a way I didn’t.  

   Aboard the train, standing, I held onto a pole to maintain balance.  I gave serious thought to my situation with my girlfriend—our situation—and it wasn’t until three stops later that I realized I was headed in the wrong direction.  I had boarded the wrong train on the opposite platform, and was headed not into the city, but further south in Brooklyn.  The right thing to do would have been to get off and transfer to a Manhattan-bound train, but in considering the phenomena of Hemingway and Hadley on the terrace—out of time and out of place—I decided to stay aboard the train I was already on and see what might be waiting for me at the end of the line.  

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Torch Song

Posted on December 12, 2025 by John Biscello

   She is there. She is always there, in the corridor. And she is lonely. This much I know. Lonely as a form of cold that you cannot cover with blankets or insulate against with coats and scarves and such. And you cannot wish it away with a lover, or three lovers, or a dozen. It is a different kind of lonely. This is the lonely that comes from wandering in corridors for too long. From living a life, unconfirmed, in corridors.

   That’s where I found her. Or how. Sometimes where and how are the same thing. She was a gauzy corridor that I had walked through. A corridor at once familiar and unfamiliar, eerie and serene. I traversed the length of this corridor, a length that was relative and subjective, and while I sensed that this corridor connected to another corridor, which connected to other corridors (and there must be rooms which factored into this layout), this corridor held me as a country unto itself. A country with a single inhabitant: her.

   She had long dark hair and was of a slight build. Her back was always turned to me, so I never saw her face. She was wearing clothes, but I couldn’t see them. That is, I knew she had clothes on, but for whatever reason they didn’t visually register. It was like I intuited the fact that she was clothed. Only the long dark hair came through as a concrete visual.

   Here’s how it went, every time: She’d walk to the edge of the corridor—me following her, as if magnetized—and she’d turn the corner, and when I turned the corner I’d find that she was gone. Always, exactly, this way. The walking, the turning, the vanishing.

   Ther was a fireplace in the corridor. Sometimes I’d sit in front of it. I’d sit there and luxuriate in its warmth and make up stories that I would never write down or share with anyone else. They were stories meant to keep me company. I understood the loneliness of the girl with the long dark hair. Wishes can burn your eyes out. In one of the stories, that was the moral: Wishes can burn your eyes out.

   Even so, I always wished to see the girl again, walking along the corridor, turning the corner, disappearing. And I did. Again and again. It was like an infinitely repeating poem or song. I don’t know exactly how many times I saw her—walking, turning the corner, disappearing—before realization, like a crystal spike, was driven through my forehead: The girl didn’t disappear. She became one of the flames in the fireplace.

   This became the fourth movement in the sequence. Or, you could say, there wasn’t really a fourth movement, but a revision of the third. Walking down the corridor, turning the corner, and disappearing via transmutation into one of the flames in the fireplace. This changed my relationship to the situation.

   Now, after she turned the corner, I’d immediately teleport to the fireplace (which was much faster than walking) and I’d see her there, a thin dancing flame, red and gold on the edges and pale blue in the center. She was there, swaying hypnotically, in sync with the concert of flames. She was a note, a precious and necessary note in a ritual score.

   That was how I came to understand that her loneliness was a different kind of loneliness from the different loneliness I had originally attributed to her. Her loneliness was a mystery. And a gateway. Through it, music could enter and seed itself.

   What I still don’t know is if she was a flame that became human, or a human that became a flame. Then again, it doesn’t really matter. What is real, and what is true, aren’t always one and the same thing. And now, when I tell stories in front of the fire, I know that she is there, if not listening, then at least dancing, and the company we keep goes beyond words.

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The Last Word podcast

Posted on December 11, 2025 by John Biscello

“Fascinating insights into the ‘storied and wild mind’ of author, playwright, poet and performer John Biscello with his latest book The Last Furies. Our far-ranging conversation takes us from his home in the “grunge-wonderland” of Taos to lands of fables and myths and even deeper into lucid dreamscapes real and imagined, awake and asleep. Spending 23 minutes with John convinces me that science fiction writer Robert Heinlein invented the word ‘grok’ to participate in a conversation like this one.”–Carly Newfeld, The Last Word

https://www.ksfr.org/show/the-last-word-show/2025-12-11/12-11-2025-with-john-biscello

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City Lights

Posted on December 11, 2025 by John Biscello

   There’s something wrong with him, my father said. Look at him. Something’s not right. Something’s happened to him. He’s sick. All he thinks about is writing. That’s all he thinks about. He is blue.

   Even though I wasn’t there, I heard my father. And perversely relished what he had said about me. All I thought about was writing. I was sick. I was blue.

  I took a job at Duane Reade. No one explained to me what my duties were. I just started doing stuff. Mostly I moved around items around on the shelves, trying to look busy. That, and I dusted the shelves. Somehow I was in possession of a feather duster.

   While I was dusting, the store manager asked me if I could work tomorrow night. I tried to think of reasons why I couldn’t work tomorrow night, but just wound up saying—I’m not interested in your offer.

   The manager’s thin dark severe eyebrows jumped to the middle of her forehead.

   Do you even want this job, she asked me.

   I gave it some thought. Yes, I said, but only on a part-time trial basis. Maybe a couple of nights a week. We’ll see how it goes.

   The store manager curtly nodded and walked away. How could she fire me? I couldn’t even remember having been hired. What was I doing at Duane Reade dusting shelves and reorganizing their inventory?

   At one point, I stopped working and stepped outside through the back door. There was a breathtaking nighttime view of the city. Everything was lit up with a resplendence that evoked the nostalgia of old films. It was New York, through a Hollywood lens, in the 1930s or 40s. My heart went out to that city, but the rest of me returned to Duane Reade. I picked up my feather duster and went back to work. I knew that I was between worlds. A decision would have to be made soon.

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