Tag Archives: Masks

Masks

Posted on August 13, 2025 by John Biscello

“Why so much fear of tears? Because the masks we use are made of salt. A stinging red salt which makes us beautiful and majestic but devours our skin.” – Luisa Valenzuela My new novel, The Last Furies, coming soon … Continue reading →

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Out of Silence

Posted on November 10, 2024 by John Biscello

Beckett spoke about it: the inability to keep quiet. The inability to not say stories, to not make stories, to not find oneself shaped according to stories fitted to shifting forms. Beckett, with gallows irony, talked plenty about silences. He … Continue reading →

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Masks

Posted on December 27, 2023 by John Biscello

You are about to kiss and be kissed. There is the matter of masks. You remove the first one, which is to say the outermost mask. Your lover removes her first one, and then her second. She is ahead of … Continue reading →

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Cherry

Posted on November 1, 2022 by John Biscello

Claudia made herself into Cherry and went to the strip club just because. Green eye shadow. Black eyeliner. Red lipstick. A face painted to imitate the likeness of another face, a wanting face, a grave tablature, a motherland face veiling … Continue reading →

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Demasking is a Crime

Posted on May 30, 2022 by John Biscello

 It was in the year _____ that a maskless society ceased to exist. Everyone was issued a mask. All masks were the same. A uniform anonymity, a sea of samefulness, or rather there was only one standard issue mask that … Continue reading →

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Masks

Posted on May 19, 2020 by John Biscello

Excerpt from a novel-in-progress: It was in the year _______, that a maskless society had ceased to exist. A decision was made by people who made decisions of that nature (yes, the masks, the decision-making, the proper authorities, all this … Continue reading →

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Corset

Posted on December 18, 2017 by John Biscello

In a vain attempt, she corseted herself in green wind and cellophane, votive to a thin whip of air. As she lay there, colors emptying to gray, before the round voices and fast hands came, she fell in and saw … Continue reading →

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Solitude #43

Posted on November 13, 2017 by John Biscello

In my solitude, I have found myself wanting to shrink even further, into a speck of light, like lint from a star’s navel, or a velvety swath of dark absented from its tailored source;  in my solitude, I long to … Continue reading →

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Farce

Posted on August 22, 2017 by John Biscello

A marriage of masks, turning silence to warm farce– neither slept soundly.

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Crossing

Posted on May 3, 2016 by John Biscello

A mirror, tilted, starkly pooling lovers self-similar turns and views of each other; I am I, you are you, qualifiers blurred and dissolved in a furious crossing of ritual desires.

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