Tag Archives: Poetry

Some Like It Hot

Posted on January 17, 2025 by John Biscello

Traversing, in a beat shuffle and worn cadence, many oblique side streets and shadow-stained back alleys to arrive at where he now stood— the white-hot lure and rigged bait of a suspect angel, who played hard to get, beckoned with … Continue reading →

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Brooklyn Spleen

Posted on November 21, 2024 by John Biscello

We didn’t talk about it, but we knew we’d never amount to anything, no matter what we did. No matter how celebrated the accomplishment, no matter how big the fiction and the audience buying it, nothing could ever fill those … Continue reading →

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Focal Points

Posted on November 19, 2024 by John Biscello

Deep focus in film, as in the depth of a shot, creating dimensional layers. What about deep focus when one points the camera towards the interior? Not just the surface level of interest or engagement, or the foreground, but a … Continue reading →

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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 →

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The Trial

Posted on November 12, 2024 by John Biscello

Enlightened, perhaps. God-engorged hormones, maybe. Regardless of why, Joan, you were the rebel prototype long before James Dean zipped up a red jacket, or Marlon Brando mumbled and curled his upperlip into a stylized totem. Before Louise Brooks and Josephine … Continue reading →

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Veils

Posted on November 12, 2024 by John Biscello

Invention was your solitude and twin, wasn’t it, Miss Nin? The calculated manner in which you spread secret pages, like silk violet capes or fringed shawls, promising an air of mystery and desire. You enabled the cause of symmetry, so … Continue reading →

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Fante and Bandini

Posted on November 12, 2024 by John Biscello

Inferiority might have been your first memory. Though you were born on American soil, stubbornly planted there, the chinked chains of immigration clanked and rattled, Marley-style, tightening around your throat, as you butted your head against the scabby base of … Continue reading →

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The Sorceress

Posted on November 11, 2024 by John Biscello

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 … Continue reading →

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We Pause for Glacial Identification

Posted on November 10, 2024 by John Biscello

It is the winter within, the writer dying, the chaos bible scored in ice, texts of veins, I mean, I think I mean, veins of text, veins and bulging whorls of text embedded in ice, and your body moving through … Continue reading →

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Kerouac

Posted on November 8, 2024 by John Biscello

Kerouac whizzed and hummed. He lived with smoldering zest a crumbling highway within. He took to this unlighted highway, equal parts tour guide and lost little lamb, nuzzling a candle, believing that even the littlest light would make him brave, … Continue reading →

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