Tag Archives: family

Winter

Posted on November 17, 2025 by John Biscello

   I say my mother’s grief was white on white … I say this, but this is not true all the time. The colors change. My mother’s grief has been pink, blue, red. Yet, more and more, when I am … Continue reading →

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Vigil

Posted on November 17, 2025 by John Biscello

When I watched my mother brush her hair, it made a scraping electric sound: vibrating plastic teeth sinking repeatedly into a fuzzy animal. I loved watching my mother brush her hair. I’d make sure to always stand behind her, so … Continue reading →

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Mayday

Posted on November 17, 2025 by John Biscello

My mother’s grief attends nightly to her bones. It is a funeral in reverse, or a funeral in slow-motion, longing for a mourning long delayed. We stall ourselves in grief—idling, passive—and the freest parts become small dark birds tearing away … Continue reading →

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Knives

Posted on November 17, 2025 by John Biscello

   My sister says she doesn’t have many memories from childhood. When she looks back, there’s nothing there: a blank screen. I never asked her if she saw black or white in her absence of memories.    One of her … Continue reading →

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Dinner, No Voices

Posted on November 17, 2025 by John Biscello

   I waited. We waited. A storm was coming. It had to be. He had returned from rehab several days earlier, after having been gone for two months. My father had always born pouchy bags under his eyes, but there, … Continue reading →

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Outpost

Posted on November 11, 2025 by John Biscello

   They don’t know my name. Thank god. If they knew my name, they’d curse it, they’d turn it into meat scrap. The stories have to keep changing. And the characters. Or they will find us. I realize I am … Continue reading →

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Goblins

Posted on October 27, 2025 by John Biscello
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Goblins

Posted on October 27, 2025 by John Biscello

Red wind spirits. They carry people off. Mostly mothers, no, not mostly mothers, than is an allegorical kink, an innate twist, it feels like mostly-mothers, and so legend instantly concretizes itself in that feeling-force. The red wind spirits are also … Continue reading →

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Hips Don’t Lie

Posted on September 16, 2025 by John Biscello

The hips don’t lie. They are the truth-telling giants, and the whistle-blowers transmitting through pirate radio. They are also the catacombs and weather satellites of one’s cumulative genealogy. When an old person falls and breaks their hip, it is not … Continue reading →

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Because I Dreamed

Posted on September 10, 2025 by John Biscello

I never say the babies’ names, because there is danger in that. I know that their names spoken, details given, things brought too much into the light, means we can be found. Their ears own so much: text, air, radio-waves, … Continue reading →

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