Today, February 11, marks the death-date of the brilliant poet, Sylvia Plath. A tribute piece, from my collection Arclight.
To be a mother, and to double as a dark sorceress, a cleaver of dried bones, could not have been easy. Especially in the 1950s. They burned witches then, as well as reds and blacks and faggots, and other things that didn’t fit the paradigmatic slant. It was a time of burning, though televisions were new, and lawns were green and sprinklered, and men chewed cud while shaving their second faces. Also, they burned witches way back when, and now too, it seems witch-hunts belong to some fraternal order of treason, some moose club with crooked antlers, who knows.
You wrote poems. No, you fevered them. Red-hot blues, peppered shards of black. You held bits of the moon hostage, or she you. You mooned for the world, a she-wolf’s strip-tease, straight to the bone, and also, also there was your death’s head vaudeville act, juggling scythes, gargling ram’s blood and spitting it back out as flames that burned skyward, charring the fluffed bellies of clouds.
Alchemy, vaudeville, burlesque, spells brightening hollowed veins and inflaming corpuscles, spells animating petrified, rotting limbs, Lady Lazarus with a sideways grin, you did it all, Miss Plath, and still had time to make dinner. Still took care of the kids. Doing all these things while crossing the River Styx on a paper boat must not have been easy. But the poems, papered heartbeats, glistening with sap and resin, as if torn directly from dream-womb, and left behind for us to ponder, digest, fill our bathtubs with and swim in.
Your silver, vagabond, winter-kissed drops, pressed between the margins of an unyielding sea, will not be forgotten, for the moon holds the tides accountable for all its parceled beauty.
Arclight has officially been released. Available in print and digital editions.
John Biscello is not simply a novelist and poet, but an alchemist of verses. In Arclight, Biscello captains a voyage that transcends the physical world with graceful introspection, and philosophical wonder. His reflective nature invites us to ponder our own life experiences and ideals. Arclight is a true tribute to the human heart. “I always saw the humanity behind his thick-lidded eyes, the small child, begging for a banquet of golden crumbs to appease the motherache churning in his heart and stomach. A thousand lions pitted against a studded chain smoking beer gutted gladiator, I saw that too, he, the lions, the gladiator, the arena, the smoke and booze, all of it…” from, I See Myself
Dear Citizens of the Blogverse:
My debut poetry collection, Arclight, will be released in mid-February by Indie Blu(e) Publishing.
I am offering a limited number of advance digital copies to readers who may be interested in reviewing the book (on your blog, Amazon, Goodreads, etc.).
For a digital ARC, message me with your info.
Thanks, cheers & blessings, y’all!
Sample poem from Arclight:
Immigration Laws
We are immigrants in our own skin,
flash-fire refugees
who get by with falsified papers,
fake IDs, and forged signatures.
If caught
and found guilty
of a trespass
or transgression,
we pardon ourselves
in our native tongues,
language a placeholder
for the names
we were forced
to annul.
Posted in Books, Poetry, Press, Publications, Uncategorized
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Tagged arclight, heather ross, Indie Blu(e), indie publishing, John Biscello, poetry collection, review copies, word is bond
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Poem from Arclight. Coming this February from Indie Blu(e) Publishing.
I do not want to see
the face of God.
I want to see her mask,
where
and for whom it cracked,
the causal history of lines and fissures,
want to trace,
with blind mute innocence,
the light quartered and drawn
in Braille, its grooves holding,
without strain or regret,
Mercy’s hidden inheritance.
Posted in Books, Poetry, Press, Publications, Uncategorized
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Tagged arclight, Claim for the Meek, heather ross, Indie Blue Publishing, John Biscello, poems, poetry collection
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Cover reveal for my debut poetry collection, Arclight. Coming this February by Indie Blu(e) Publishing.
Posted in Books, Poetry, Press, Publications, Uncategorized
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Tagged arclight, collection, February 2019, heather ross, Indie Blu(e), John Biscello, Poetry
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Review of Yelena Moskovich’s debut novel The Natashas.
“You enter a dark, deserted warehouse on the waterfront. One that smells of cats and kerosene, and whose walls are covered with dusty calendars from bygone eras. Or perhaps you find yourself in the balmy catacombs of an arterial sanctuary. Or, fill-in-the-blank, and create a setting that corresponds with your own resonant sense of dislocation, the flickering rose-light of omen and mystery. Simply, you are there, delegate to enigma, compelled to explore, to scratch an existential itch, which began with a crumb floating in a pool of cirrus: ‘In the boxshaped windowless room, all the girls are named Natasha.’ A simple description and declaration, what could be the textual fade-in to a Samuel Beckett cryptogram, and it is this cinematic ‘teaser’ which has drawn your inner-Philip Marlowe into a Maya Deren filmscape where a sign warns: The dream you are dreaming may not be your own. Welcome to the lucidly baffling world of Yelena Moskovich.”
Posted in Books, Press, Prose, Publications, Uncategorized
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Tagged book review, Dzanc Books, John Biscello, novel, riot material, the natashas, Yelena Moskovich
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You, Moon,
told me a secret
when I was a child–
Make wonder
your compass,
your true north,
abide by its magnetic tow,
and you will never get lost,
not truly,
and your soul will make
for warm, favored company.
(Artwork by James MacNeill Whistler)
At times,
the savvy and elaborate architecture
of words,
the stunning and complex
tapestry of language,
its magisterial tunings
to sound,
is, in its beggared haunt
and infancy,
rooted in the unscabbed
core
of a pinking utterance,
a single quiver
airing innocence
to burn–
Ow.
We are mostly
made from absence,
a light-stitched band
of particles,
aspiring, in concert,
to harmonize daring
feats of love,
or how we dream, in fits,
aligning our nodes
to perish.
Slowly, slowly,
pour me out
of the wounds,
the chafing legend,
that we,
intransitive
in our grief,
shared at a common altar
and dais,
remember how we,
marvelous in our reaching,
hallowed the moon
as a redundant savior,
a charnel chamber for loaded romantics,
and came to loss
by the tenderest means
allotted fools.
