On:

Synopsis A series of attempts made by a now defunctBook club to break off an engagementBefore it happens what starts off as badAdvice given at a New Years Eve partyTurns into a comedy of errors when anAlcoholic poet recruits estranged frenemiesAnd former roommates alike while touringA closing light exhibit atContinue Reading

On:

I hate myself for showing up to work. What a waste. I’ve danced four sets for worse than no one, just those who return my failing attempts at sensuality with a dehumanizing stare. I’m continually reminding myself that it’s not my fault that I’m not making money. Not helping though.Continue Reading

On:

I am whispering in the room of my heart.Do you hear me? When my skull tingles,When you cook eggs in the morning,When I wake in the night and you’re still asleep but your hand reaches for my thigh anyway?When we kiss in the parking lot and someone whistles and IContinue Reading

On:

As children, we made games of the gallons: underwater worlds inhabited by two.As teenagers, we tanned, splashed. Dared to jump from the highest rock.As honeymooners, we waited for darkness, stripped, leapt: entangled in the current, each other’s limbs.As parents, we walked her patiently. Small steps, spying for fishies. Tiny handContinue Reading

On:

It’s been on my desk since I started this job, that framedprint of the selfie we took in Times Square –September 2010, our first date – the Golden Arches,and the red stripes of TGI Fridays behind us,me in a light-yellow shirt, you in a turquoise scarf and anecklace you stillContinue Reading

On:

Isn’t it strange the way you’re always sayingsomething I’d thought just the other hour or dayor the other way around? Or maybe,each was thinking the same phrase at the same second,just a question of who trots it out first:makes the other laugh or sigh, inside or out.That day you admiredContinue Reading

On:

At fifteen, my first boyfriend and Itook a chance: kissed on a park benchunder cannabis clouds, and thejet exhaust near Kennedy airport. Five minutes into it, and beforeeither of us were ready to commit,our metal braces linked us most intimately as a full moon ascended amidstour raging adolescent hormones.We giggledContinue Reading

On:

The story appeared in the magazine’s Personal Experience column. George always read the column’s first paragraph, then picked out a middle paragraph, and finally read the last paragraph. If he wasn’t too busy and there were enough potato chips left in the bag, he’d read the remaining inside paragraphs, inContinue Reading

On:

Do not hide your face from meLet your light touch meDearly belovedHear unto my pleaLet not any barrierCome betwixt usMay we beForever entwinedTill the celestial bodiesTurn to dust and ashMay our hearts’ tantric enigmaBe a fire that surpasses all blissMay hell’s heat paleWhen compared to ourSplendor Justin Ratcliff is aContinue Reading