Tag Archives: Prose

Claim

Posted on June 5, 2018 by John Biscello

We slowdanced in a house of mirrors. Some of the mirrors had been burned in fires and showed black. Others were webbed in cracks. Still others bore dimensional distortions leading to instant surrealism. When I asked her which of her … Continue reading →

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Can I Strip For You?

Posted on June 5, 2018 by John Biscello

I want to exist for you, even if only as confusion and fiction, she said. Really, I said. No, un-really, she corrected, then caught my nose between her knuckles and gave it a playful toggle.    I didn’t know what … Continue reading →

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Confessions at the End of the Tunnel

Posted on May 18, 2018 by John Biscello

   It was the very end of our relationship, when it was past the point of ever being good again.  We both knew it but neither one of us wanted to say it, because that would mean letting go and … Continue reading →

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The Passion of Joan of Arc

Posted on April 17, 2018 by John Biscello

(Review of The Passion of Joan of Arc, the silent film classic, which is celebrating its 90th anniversary.) Celebrating its 90th anniversary, Dreyer’s film remains starkly modern in its composition and complexion, fixed in an otherworldly and hallucinogenic present. Jean Cocteau … Continue reading →

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Granny and Chaplin

Posted on April 15, 2018 by John Biscello

  (Today is my grandmother May’s birthday, May-Day in my heart. Tomorrow is Sir Charlie Chaplin’s birthday, Fool’s-Play-Day in my heart. And so, in honor of these two wonderful and loving spirits) In times of hardship and heartache my grandmother … Continue reading →

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Joan of Arc

Posted on April 6, 2018 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 totem, before Louise Brooks and Josephine Baker … Continue reading →

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Denis Johnson’s Sea Maiden

Posted on April 5, 2018 by John Biscello

Review of Denis Johnson’s The Largesse of the Sea Maiden appearing in Riot Material. “Picture the sibilant music of blood-red sand shifting from one bulbous half of the hourglass to the other. Or black-and-white film footage, bearing a scarred geography … Continue reading →

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Sylvia Plath

Posted on April 4, 2018 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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Growing Young

Posted on April 2, 2018 by John Biscello

I want to grow young with you, she said. It made perfect sense. People had it all wrong. You don’t grow old, your body, this borrowed vessel, it withers and ages and decays, your body grows old, your brain grows … Continue reading →

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Snapshot

Posted on March 29, 2018 by John Biscello

(Excerpt from Raking the Dust) Seven years later, reflecting upon an analytical snapshot held up to the light: Thirty-three, unemployed, a boatload of debt, drinking excessively, divorcee, amateur plumber of shit-clogged pipe dreams—when I got my head stuck up my … Continue reading →

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