Tag Archives: Poetry

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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Fins

Posted on September 9, 2025 by John Biscello

The men I have given myself to are scorching a map onto my skin. I’d say it was a map of the underworld, but I don’t know if that’s altogether true. It seems too dramatic, too much like fantasy. And … Continue reading →

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Fable

Posted on September 8, 2025 by John Biscello

I have become moonless in my grief, a paled comparison. But to what? To who I used to be? What I expected to become? I feel as if I’ve been laid out an operating table, and Time, as a methodically … Continue reading →

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Godot in Vegas

Posted on September 8, 2025 by John Biscello

This just in: No one is waiting for Godot anymore. No one has the time or interest. Plus, no one knows who he, or Samuel Beckett is. The wastelands are even dryer, tubercular in their plot and scrape, and presently … Continue reading →

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Less Said

Posted on September 7, 2025 by John Biscello

I have no desire to sing tonight. This is the only line Samuel Beckett managed to write for a libretto which he abandoned. The smallest hours hold staggering volumes of silence.

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Memory Piece

Posted on September 4, 2025 by John Biscello

A young woman came to see me yesterday. I know it’s my daughter, yet something stops the word daughter from coming out of my mouth, any of my mouths. There is word-daughter and there is daughter-daughter and word-daughter is the … Continue reading →

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Remains of the Day

Posted on September 4, 2025 by John Biscello

The first spots were discovered, and contrary to my sense of fiction, they had nothing to do with extraterrestrials or loneliness. Nor poverty. Soon, no exact timetable, but soon my memories would no longer be mine. I would no longer … Continue reading →

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Plot

Posted on September 4, 2025 by John Biscello

Yesterday I buried my mother. Two mothers. Maybe three, or four. I have had many mothers in the small hours of this modest and shrinking life. All of my mothers are tassels of foam threading mighty surf. All of my … Continue reading →

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Portrait

Posted on September 1, 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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