Tag Archives: story

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 →

Posted in Poetry, Prose | Tagged bond, burial, epitaph, fiction, fragment, plot, Poetry, Prose, story | Leave a comment

Bed

Posted on September 4, 2025 by John Biscello

I lie in wait. Hell is supposed to come anytime now. That’s what the others started calling that which was scheduled to come: hell. You would think that humans wouldn’t want to coordinate or administrate hell, but it seems they … Continue reading →

Posted in Artwork, photography, Poetry, Prose | Tagged 1950s, atomic bomb, doomtown, fiction, life, mannequins, may 5 1955, nuclear testing, Prose, slice of life, story, viva las vegas, writing | Leave a comment

Knife

Posted on September 1, 2025 by John Biscello

My sister says she doesn’t have many memories from childhood. When she looks back, there’s nothing there: a blank screen. I never asked her if she saw black or white in her absence of memories. One of her earliest memories, … Continue reading →

Posted in Poetry, Prose | Tagged family, father, fiction, knife, memory, memory piece, mother, Prose, sister, story, violence, writing | Leave a comment

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 →

Posted in Poetry, Prose | Tagged brush, eyes, hair, mother, Poetry, portrait, Prose, son, staring, story, temple | Leave a comment

Dinner

Posted on August 31, 2025 by John Biscello

I waited. We waited. A storm was coming. It had to be. He had returned from rehab several days earlier, after having been gone for two months. My father had always born pouchy bags under his eyes, but there, … Continue reading →

Posted in Poetry, Prose | Tagged dinner, domestic, family, fiction, fragment, hunger, life, love, Prose, short piece, silence, story, writing | Leave a comment

Sonata of the I

Posted on April 1, 2025 by John Biscello

The hatless pilgrim, roving this way and that, a man embodying the virtues of scat (in every sense of the word), roving through starched cardstock fields in search of an impossible flower and its stingy nettles—proud, pistil-engraved, the flower’s gullet … Continue reading →

Posted in Poetry, Prose | Tagged fiction, music, pilgrimage, Poetry, Prose, samuel beckett, self, solipsistic kicks, sonata, story, variations on I, what's in a name | Leave a comment

Metamorphosis Variations

Posted on February 24, 2025 by John Biscello

My fiction piece, “Metamorphosis Variations” (inspired by the first sentence of Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis”) now appearing in 3:AM magazine. Excerpt below: As I awoke one morning, from a night of discarded syringes and cough syrup, I found myself transformed … Continue reading →