Tag Archives: grief

Waves

Posted on September 5, 2025 by John Biscello

What is the difference between memory and fiction? What are the intersecting policies of their tenuous and subjective relationship? For example: You have a woman, a mother recalling her dead daughter. She sees her daughter playing on the beach, she … Continue reading →

Posted in Poetry, Prose | Tagged .imagination, beach, daughter, fiction, grief, memory, mother, Prose, story, waves | Leave a comment

Miasma

Posted on September 1, 2025 by John Biscello

I have mimicked many voices to track and capture my mother’s theriomorphic grief, therefore my own: history pared and blood-let outside of time. Inside time, once upon a time, my mother was, as she tells it, a terrified-out-of-her-mind seventeen-year-old, not … Continue reading →

Posted in Poetry, Prose | Tagged birth, birthing blues, connection, grief, hospital, human condition, mother, Poetry, Prose, son, text | Leave a comment

In the Dark

Posted on August 31, 2025 by John Biscello

I was vacant when he entered me, a ghost in a long corridor. In the distance, I heard low hissing. As if the world were losing air through a slow leak. I silently sang myself a lullaby from my childhood, … Continue reading →

Posted in Poetry, Prose | Tagged darkness, grief, lullaby, mother, Poetry, Prose, song, words | Leave a comment

Distances

Posted on November 18, 2024 by John Biscello

In the catacombs of grief, she wandered. She wandered, without thirst, without hunger, without want. This frightened her. Had she lost her basic humanity? Why had she created such elaborate labyrinths in which to wander? Try saying that ten times … Continue reading →

Posted in Poetry, Prose | Tagged compass, grief, humpty dumpty, labyrinth, life, maze, Poetry, Prose, raft, story, wandering, woman, words, writing | Leave a comment

Sea Change

Posted on August 25, 2024 by John Biscello

Excerpt from my recently completed novel, Worlds Last Imagined. This fragment is a meditation upon the tenuous and subjective relationship between memory and fiction: She stood at a distance, imagining her daughter there, playing. She saw how her daughter lit … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, photography, Poetry, Prose | Tagged beach, excerpt, fiction, grief, love, memory, mother and daughter, novel, passage, sea, story | Leave a comment

Cause of Light

Posted on February 4, 2024 by John Biscello

She stood at a distance, imagining her daughter there, playing. She saw how her daughter lit up with glee when she was near the sea, or scampering along the shoreline, collecting shells, poking holes in the mud with a stick, … Continue reading →

Posted in Poetry, Prose | Tagged childhood, Dancing, grief, light and shadow, mother and duahgter, past present future, poem, Prose, purge, release, sea, shoreline blues | 1 Comment

Bone Jig

Posted on December 6, 2022 by John Biscello

Posted in Artwork, Audio, photography, Poetry, Prose | Tagged art, Audio, grief, mother, Spoken Word, story, words | Leave a comment

Doll

Posted on November 18, 2022 by John Biscello

Nineteen rifles and the village was burned to the ground nineteen rifles stolen by rebels and then came the awful burning down what was called scorched earth policy. My mother my father my brother were burned down to the ground … Continue reading →

Posted in Artwork, Poetry, Prose | Tagged abstract, art, childhood, girl, grief, memory, rothko, tragedy, village, voices, words | Leave a comment

Watchword

Posted on November 15, 2022 by John Biscello

Grief lies here like an insomniac pining for sleep. Like scissors running dull to the touch of fate. We paper over grief its ruins and brittle slates with hordes of torn pages. Forget me nots band aids christ sporting a … Continue reading →

Posted in Artwork, photography, Poetry, Prose | Tagged fate, grief, installation, mercy, paper, rocks, scissors, words, yoko ono | Leave a comment

Mothlight

Posted on October 31, 2022 by John Biscello

It happens like that. Slow baked, sudden bubbling, no cauldron, face up in the vortex. You become days of mourning. A pall, a viscous grayish veil. You can no longer see clearly or purely. Vision pales, angel eyes gone. You … Continue reading →

Posted in Poetry, Prose | Tagged cycles, days of mourning, grief, moon stuff, Poetry, Prose, purge | Leave a comment