Crack the Spine
Literary magazine Issue 123
Issue 123 August 13, 2014 Edited by Kerri Farrell Foley Collection copyright 2014 by Crack the Spine
Cover Art: “Earth & Sky Divide� by Jessica Bastear Jessica Bastear is a college student in southern California that loves being outdoors as much as possible, especially since growing up in forest-filled northern California. Much of her photography displays this love of nature, but occasionally she enjoys editing more artistic photos that coincide with her mood or even her poetry.
Matthew Liebowitz
CONTENTS
Summer
Jane-Rebecca Cannarella Fighting Over the Best Flavor in Neapolitan Ice Cream
Valya Dudycz Lupescu As the Bright Scythe Swept Through the Waving Grass
Elisabeth Cook
Unexpected Religions
Ed Nichols I Need My Five Hundred Dollars
Bruce Eliot Alford Dead Forms
Alyssa Ross Wings
Matthew Liebowitz Summer
“Irish car bombs,” one of child pediatrician with a there’s no humor, and these men at the beach says. “Can you even get one in Ireland?” The sun is perfect and round and bright, that’s one thing, but my friends aren’t alive anymore, so they aren’t coming. Instead, I’ve put myself square in the middle of a group of stupid young tanned men I don’t know. This is not the first time. But lucky for me these three indisputable facts: this canteen of daiquiris is not to share, my imagination is still intact, and each and every wetsuit walking or running by contains a
private practice. Oh, the things they can say, these men. The worries they have. The simple advice they give, always fair and just and right and perfect. “Just bring cash,” one says to another. “Just tape up those two fingers”; “Just make sure it sticks”; “Just say you will, but later”; “Just tell her enough.”
really it’s only humiliating, and this family to my right isn’t helping, and what are there, thirty of you? One of the men in the group sees me, and offers his assistance. First he must put down his beer can. “Thank you, thank you,” I say in a voice that’s certainly too old to be mine. I nearly lose my At my age, to get up and walk can be, with the fingers in his arm hair. right attitude, a very No matter, I think. It’s funny procedure. been a good run, hand. Especially in this sand “There you go,” he says, and these, what are lifting me upright. See, there is kindness these seaweed balls called? But right now in the world!
Why I’m walking, why I delicious bother getting up at all, is I want a Snow-Ice from the Snow-Ice stand on the pier, and if I don’t get there before twothirty, my day will have been a waste. My life: no. Here’s what I know: the teenage Snow-Ice vendors work in twohour shifts, beginning at ten-thirty; it’s been this way for at least forty years. Roddy used to say the third shift was when they recycled yesterday’s syrup. “By that time,” he’d say, “everyone’s already three in the bag. They’d eat the bird droppings if they were cold enough.” “And covered in this
sugar
concoction,” I’d say.
All these sensationally fit men named LIFEGUARD, and why isn’t one of them helping me? Or at least sweeping me off my tired feet and bones and carrying me somewhere far away, where it’s even sunnier and all my family and everyone I’ve ever loved or even liked is together in one comfortable house.
Roddy and I never drank much. On the beach, at least. We were more like Snow-Ice connoisseurs, I guess you could say: we liked the jagged crunch of the shavings at the
top, the pinprick rush of cold at the temples, the sugary film and unnatural color left on our lips and teeth. He’d get grape, I’d get strawberry. One a day, every day. Ours was a beautiful and constant climate where winter was a distant vague memory and Snow-Ices were year round.
When I had Kyle and was in bed for two weeks, Roddy drove his Ford right onto the pier, picked them up, and drove back. He ran an orthopedics office out of the house, three blocks east of the beach. I remember patients
waiting — boys with ankles swollen five shades of red, boys with makeshift casts, boys with arms in slings, always boys boys boys — while Roddy ran out the back entrance, hungry for sugar and syrup and ice. “If that’s not love,” I always thought. Towards the end, I bought a Costco size thing of the same paper cones used by the SnowIce vendors. Each new day I would color one purple and tape it to the top of Roddy’s feeding tube.
Call
it elderly-onset alcoholism. Why not, is how I reason it. And the
smoking, too. They say for every cigarette you lose six seconds of your life. Well, I don’t feel any deader. Thirty yards of sand and bodies lay between the pier and me. Thirty yards! That I’m drunk doesn’t help, but it is another day, and what would another day be without a strawberry Snow-Ice?
them, my daughter who moved to England at twenty-three or four or whichever and only comes home once every few years, and what did she know of the sixties, living in Surrey, teaching Spanish? But the walk to my beach chair, licking the Snow-Ice, an old lady my age with the ocean shimmering and reaching its wide palm to What I can say about the the end of the world — Summer of Love is that it this is what they mean was much shorter than by a trip. the Great Depression. What I can say about all Here's where his loss is those hallucinogens is felt: I can't get sunscreen nothing at all, not even on my back, and there's from listening no one to refill the ice unwillingly to my trays in the freezer. daughter talk about
Back in my beach chair, Snow-Ices. It’s for him I and the men are playing volleyball and talking about dating. Comparing it to a hunting trip I think is what that blond one is doing. “Catch and release,” he coughs between big healthy gulps of beer. “That doesn’t even make a tiny bit of sense,” someone’s skinny girlfriend says. Oh, to be a piece of bait, all these women in stringy flower patterned suits, tiny stomachs and tans exactly the opposite of leather, or Styrofoam, or whatever mine’s become. To be caught.
Roddy is gone, but it’s for him I still eat these
overhear this male nonsense, for him that I relax each day with the sun obliterating my skin and my hair and this quickly melting paper cone. For him that I move closer to the water, plant my chair firmly in the wake and let the ocean erase my feet, my ankles. It’s for him I refill this canteen, for him that my chair and I will eventually float away.
Jane-Rebecca Cannarella Fighting Over the Best Flavor in Neapolitan Ice Cream
When I was younger I’d spend entire days kissing a troubled boy. We’d sit in his cramped bedroom, in between piles of graying laundry, and shoot billows of white smoke into each other’s mouths – clouds collecting around our heads. I’d trace the shape of his lips and poke the groove between his nose and mouth. I think it’s called a philtrum. We’d clink spoons that made caverns in Neapolitan ice cream, listening to Patti Smith so loudly our back teeth rattled. I wish I could remember his name – he ended up spending a lot of time kissing other girls, so eventually space and clouds of smoke erased him. But yesterday I heard Easter and could feel icy strawberries in the corners of my mouth where our lips used to meet.
Valya Dudycz Lupescu As the Bright Scythe Swept Through the Waving Grass
There seemed a poetic justice when the grasshoppers began their invasion. I had always abhorred the way Aesop dismissed their dancing as folly, choosing only the industrious ants to survive. It seemed a condemnation of artists everywhere. Photos of the insects began to pop up on social media: locusts lounging on doorsteps, katydids collecting on windowsills. The first few were novel, caught with smartphone cameras and shared online: crickets with striking jewel-toned antennae and crystalline exoskeletons sparkling all over the internet. Soon the dazzling largerthan-normal insects from the order Orthoptera were on every building and vehicle, most surfaces had dozens of them congregated in strange patterns. Amateur entomologists collected photos of new varieties on
tumblr; there were millions of unidentified species. We heard whispers of plague and fear of divine wrath and judgment shouted from street corners. Still the insects sat without suggestion of malice, watching humanity with compound eyes cut like diamonds. Governments and corporations raced to find an effective killer in what came to be called the global “Pesticide Escalation.� Waves of DDT variants washed over glittering bugs like mist, but nothing worked. Children spent summer afternoons running with jars and nets, but the creatures were clever survivalists and nearly always escaped. The Orthoptera took extraordinary leaps, stayed always just out of reach, and observed from safe distances. The bugs became the subject of panic, then jokes, then advertising,
then conspiracies; and eventually, a few months after they appeared en masse, the novelty faded. Busy like ants in their ambitions, people returned to their everyday routines. By the time the locusts molted into larger versions of themselves, leaving behind strange silken shells, the world was no longer paying attention. The media had new darlings, new trends and threats and controversies. One cool October, the larger Orthoptera (now the size of small rodents), began to rub their legs
against their wings. Their exoskeletons radiated from within; and amplified by their crystalline bodies, the sound of their strange stridulation spread across the planet in waves. It knocked out electrical grids and communication systems and left the world disconnected. The locusts swarmed. They ate everything that was green, from roots to tender leaves, and they didn’t stop there. This time, when the winter came, it was the ants who starved.
Elisabeth Cook Unexpected Religions
I need something to explain this good feeling, this nourishment. You pierced my throat with your teeth, interrupting old seams, and then I understood what “nourish” meant. To take credit would disfigure you. Vampires are supposed to hurt, not heal. Underground Railroad housewives were to sew quilts with patterns of agreed definition. There were, of course, gaps in their instruction –
what to do when the message seemed was not the message sent. That a needle nosing astray could spell salvation is beyond you. In your country one only regrets. There are unexpected religions in your hair and fingers. The buttons on your blouse are worshipers. Adherents fill your thousand-count sheet set. My need to explain dissolves into floral sprays, bouquets obscure and mundane you catch and dissect. Your belief is in taking only what you get.
Ed Nichols I Need My Five Hundred Dollars
The phone rang just library. He had six more Leon asked. after Leon had finished his sandwich and drank his iced tea and stretched out on the sofa for his afternoon nap. He had glanced out the window and noticed some dark clouds. Maybe it’ll rain, he thought—that’ll make the nap even better. His wife, Pat, would not be home from her shop until five-thirty or so, and his plans were to take his nap, then go in the kitchen and wash the dishes and straighten up a bit, then get back on the sofa and read one of the novels he had checked out at the
weeks of unemployment to draw before he had to get serious about finding a new job. As soon as he had got comfortable and closed his eyes, the phone rang. He glanced over to it and let it ring out—probably the unemployment office. He had closed his eyes again. The phone rang again. He sat up, and said, “Dammit.” Leon walked over to the phone and picked up the receiver. He said, “Hello.” “Finally, you answered!” a sharp voice said. “Yes. Who is this?”
The voice said, “I need my five hundred dollars, that’s who this is!” “What? You must have the wrong number.” “Listen, ass-hole, I need it today! You hear me!” the voice hollered. Leon decided this was enough. He said, “Mister, I don’t know who you are, but you’ve obliviously got the wrong number.” Leon hung up. He sat on the sofa trying to think if he’d ever heard that voice before. The guy is very upset. I don’t need this aggravation, he thought.
He debated if he should unplug the phone. The phone rang again before he could unplug it, and he answered. The sharp, loud voice said, “I’ve got to have the five hundred dollars! Today!” Leon was silent for a moment, and then he said, “Is this Marvin?” “Don’t you get what I’m telling you?” the voice said. “If’n I don’t get the money today, something bad’s going to happen!” Leon hurriedly hung up the phone and unplugged it. He sat down on the sofa and wondered, what the heck was going on. Was it Pat’s ex, Marvin? Or
some drunk or some deranged person. It was not one of those scam calls they’d been getting every now and then. The man was too forceful. Too angry—about getting the money. Someone must owe him five hundred dollars, Leon thought. He remembered the first and only time he’d met Marvin. He and Pat were in the grocery store and ran into him at the meat counter. Pat had been nice about it and introduced Leon to Marvin, and they’d made some small talk and moved on. He’d not seen Marvin since. On the way home that day, Pat had said it looked like
Marvin was maybe still on meth. Leon had just nodded, but it took him several days to forget how God-awful Marvin’s teeth had looked. Leon got up and plugged the phone back in the wall. He stood, staring at the phone, unsure what to do. It rang again. He let it ring ten times before he picked up the receiver, and said, “Hello.” “You deaf sona-bitch! You can’t hear yore phone ringing?” Leon tried to remember how Marvin had sounded that day at the grocery store—but it wouldn’t come to him. He said, “Marvin? Is this you? What the heck’s
going on? I don’t know nothing about no five hundred dollars.” “Bull-shit! I’m giving you till six o’clock tonight to call me and tell me you got the money for me! Good bye, ass-hole!” Leon unplugged the phone again and sat down on the sofa. That’s it he decided. Leave it unplugged until Pat gets home. He picked up a novel from the coffee table and stretched out on the sofa. He figured he might as well read since there was no way he could nap with those phone conversations going around in his mind. He did doze off
though, and woke with a start when Pat came in the front door. Leon sat up, blinked and stretched. “Hey,” he said. “You had a good day?” Pat smiled, walked to him and kissed him. “Very good, Honey. Lots of walk-ins today.” Then she turned and headed for the kitchen. Leon stood up and walked toward her. “Listen, I’ve got to tell—“ “Leon,” she called from the kitchen, “you didn’t wash the dishes and all.” “No,” he said. “That’s what I need to tell you, about what happened this afternoon. On the phone. Come sit down a minute and let me explain.”
“Okay. What’s been going on?” Leon motioned to the sofa and said, “There’s been a weird phone call, calls that is, I need to tell you about.” “What do you mean, calls?” Leon told her about his conversations with the loud, sharp-talking man. He tried to remember all the details, so she’d have a good picture of what had taken place. Then he ended by saying that he thought the man might be Marvin. “I’m not sure it was him—but I sort of got that feeling.” Pat asked, “The man never said his name? But, he said five hundred
dollars?” “Right.” Pat pointed to the phone. “We should’ve gotten that caller ID. Then we would’ve been able to trace it.” “Yea. Should have. But not that message answering system.” “Why not, Honey?” she said. “That answering feature might be good when you start applying for jobs again. If we’re out of the house people can leave you a message and all. It might speed up your job search.” Leon nodded. He stood up and said, “I’m going to the fridge and get a beer. You want one? I guess we’ll sit here and wait till six
o’clock.” “Sure,” Pat said. They sat on the sofa drinking beer. Waiting for the phone to ring. Pat opened a pack of cigarettes and lit one. “I think maybe you should answer it this time,” he said. “That way you can tell if it’s Marvin or not.” “Okay. I’ll do it,” Pat said blowing smoke across the coffee table. Six o’clock came and went. The phone never rang. They went in the kitchen and ate some leftovers for supper. Afterwards, Pat smoked some cigarettes and Leon drank more beer. They watched television and kept glancing at the phone. Before they went
to bed, Leon told Pat, “I hope you’ll try quitting again.” She said, “I might.” “I hope so,” he said. She snuggled her arm around his neck, and said, “I know you don’t like cigarette smoke. I never smoke at the shop, but smoking here helps relieve my work-day tension.” “I’m not complaining. You know that, don’t you?” “I know that, Honey”
The next morning Pat left Leon asleep in bed. When she had been getting dressed for work, she had a thought about the phone calls, but she decided not to wake him.
She would call him later. He got up around nine o’clock, dressed and went to the kitchen. He made coffee and ate two donuts while he read the weekly paper again. He looked at the classifieds for the third or fourth time and still didn’t see any jobs that interested him. He moved into the living room and sat on the sofa with a book. The phone rang. He jumped up, dropped the book, and stood staring at the phone. It rang five times before he decided to answer it. It was Pat. “Honey,” she said, “I had a thought this morning about the calls.” “Okay,” he said. “What? You think it
might be Marvin?” “Could be, possibly. Listen, I don’t have anybody scheduled after three-thirty today, so I’m going to close the shop and come home early, and we’ll look into seeing if maybe my idea is why this has happened.” “You don’t want to tell me now? On the phone,” he said. “Rather not. I’ve got one under the dryer and another walking in the door. See you this afternoon.” Leon was waiting on the sofa when Pat walked in the house. She put her pocket book and appointment book on the coffee table, and sat
down beside him. She leaned back and said, “This morning when I was getting dressed, I happened to glance up on the top shelf in my closet and saw my old wooden cigar box—and wheels started turning in my head.” “Cigar box?” he asked. “Yes. You’ve probably noticed it before. Anyway, my daddy gave it to me when I was ten years old. I’ve kept it over the years and from time to time I’ve put what mama used to call sock money in it. Haven’t used it in a good while though—probably not since we got married.” Leon looked at his
wife funny, and asked, “What’s this got to do with the calls?” “Here’s the story,” she said. “When I was married to Marvin and left Maxine’s Salon to open my own shop, Marvin loaned me five hundred dollars to buy my chair, the sink and some supplies to get started: cans of hair spray, bottles of shampoo and all. He had a good job at the concrete company back then.” Pat paused and lit a cigarette. She slid the ashtray on the coffee table closer. “That was before he started running around, and before he got on meth.” “For Pete’s sake!” Leon
said. “Do you still owe him the money?” “No. I put fifty dollars a week in the cigar box and when I got to five hundred, I gave it to him. Here’s what crossed my mind this morning,” she explained. “Suppose he’s in one of his drugged out conditions, and for some reason, he thinks I still owe him the money.” “But why didn’t he ask for you? Or why wouldn’t he tell me his name?” “Honey,” she said, “meth does things to people’s minds that are unexplainable. That is the truth. There’s no logic at all sometimes to what they are saying.” “You could be right.
He knew your phone number, that’s for sure since he lived here. Do you have a number for him?” “No. I have no idea where he’s at,” she said. She put her cigarette out in the ashtray. “However, we could call his mother. I’ve still got her number. Maybe she knows.” “It might be worth calling him about this,” Leon said. “He might be sobered up today. But if that was him yesterday, he was really out of it.” “Okay, let’s do it,” Pat said. She walked over to the phone with her address book and dialed Marvin’s mother. His mother gave Pat the last
number she had for Marvin. Pat then dialed Marvin’s number. Someone answered and talked to Pat for a couple of minutes. Pat thanked the person, hung up the phone and sat down beside Leon. “Well?” he said. “Okay. Some young twit answered and told me that Marvin was not there. Said he passed out yesterday on the front porch about six o’clock. Said she woke up later when she heard car doors slamming and she went out to the porch and Marvin was nowhere in sight, but his pickup was still in the yard. Said she hadn’t heard from him today.
She doesn’t know where he is, or what has happened to him.” Leon leaned back on the sofa and crossed his arms over his chest. Pat lit a cigarette, took a long draw and blew smoke out. “I wish, you’d try quitting again,” he said. “I’ll quit smoking when you quit drinking beer,” she said, and laughed. “Dang, Pat. That ain’t no relationship at all. Smoking’ll give you lung cancer—and it stinks up the whole house. Beer don’t give you cancer and it sure don’t smell bad.” They both laughed.
Bruce Eliot Alford Dead Forms
A sturdy comb turns phosphorescent inside a heater’s broken grate. My mother picks it up, parts her hair lightly, light in spite of flesh, the folds of fat. A white bra clasp bridges the line down her back And on a nearby dresser, her Royal Crown, yes, the familiar hairdressing in the red and green can. Gone. Because she isn’t here. All pale, my mother’s shade ascends, yet I see her face. For years, I watched so that I should understand Even the everlasting becomes ordinary if you see it day after day. Lie as quietly as a cigarette inside an ashtray.
A burnt-burnt odor fills the room, a mysterious cloud A pillar of fire; darkness, darkness, and awfulness. When I say quit, I am dead earnest, but my mother laughs. A burning cigarette lasts, roughly, seven minutes They say a good pressing lasts about a week, heaven Let me see her here, even after death. Yes, there is life After death, let me see her sitting where she sat, let me see her hair missing from her temples, her glory burned away. Her Royal Crown and the finest care couldn’t help The burned scalp is beautiful in fact, it resists being too beautiful. Beauty wants to rid itself of outward show.
Alyssa Ross Wings An angel, frustrated by her future – that tedious expanse of eternity – that was laid out flat before her like the dusty plains of the midwest. She could still see the world, but failed to remember how it felt. Wondering, pondering if she’d ever been human at all. Whispering a breathless wish to again take fullform. To stray from the heavens. If our angels lost touch, went mad, the ever-tilting system, the barelybalancing chaos of life and death could not sustain. Someone, something smart enough to see, granted the angels temporary bodies to keep feelings of exclusion at bay. Very hush-hush stuff. But even with a new body, a hindrance of the Angel’s former life remained. As their new
feet touched the earth, lustrous white wings sprouted from their skin. A chain between heaven and earth, the wings were designed to bring them back. The cracked asphalt was hard and hot between her toes. The burn of new flesh told her to move. And she knew where to go. The sun was spent, leaving behind a pale grey shadow that would soon fade to black. She had a few provisional items: clothes, cash, and tape. Carefully binding her wings, slowly dressing herself, admiring her own itchy, dimpled skin. Once clothed, she followed the hazy street lights to the nearest bar. As she walked in, her shoes stuck to the shiny, wooden floor. The thick aroma of smoke and whiskey burned her nose as she looked around the room for a specificsort-of man. She ordered a beer and
began greedily eating handfuls of salty peanuts. In a dark corner, Angel watched the door, sipping her beer, the bubbles tickling the inside of her mouth. In walked several young men with stomachs like wood and the stone jaw. Some fine work, she laughed, like opening the backside of a clock. But none of them would do. After hours of waiting, she spotted him rubbing his forehead, riddled with wrinkles. He looked tired, grinding his temples with swollen, calloused hands. But the affect that solidified her desire was the shiny, red scar that ran from his neck to the inside of his shirt. Where did the scar stop? She wanted to peel away the layers of his skin, one by one, to see how deep it went. Grabbing his belt-loop, she pulled him towards the bathroom. He loosely held her arm with his rough, oilstained hand and followed like a dazed child. She locked the bathroom
door and began unbuttoning his shirt. But the man grabbed her wrist just before she could unclasp the shiny, black button. “Why are you doing this,” he asked. She didn’t answer, but instead pulled a knife from her pocket. Using the dull edge of the blade, she traced his scar all the way down to his chest, snapping the buttons from his shirt. He stood, stunned, as she turned the
blade around to the sharp edge. Without warning, she sliced through the tape around her wings, letting them spread boldly across the bathroom wall. “I need you to do something for me,” she breathed in his ear. “Anything. I’ll do anything,” he replied in a scratchy, determined voice. She put the knife in his hand and turned her back towards him, bending over slightly and bracing herself against the wall. “Cut them off,” she demanded. “Not that. Please, anything else,” he said, gruff voice suddenly softening. “You can do this. It’s why I picked you. You have to do this,” she pleaded. The man, who now understood the full weight of this encounter, made the first incision. He paused as blood gushed from the wound, staining the white feathers an absurd pink. Angel screamed out, “Keep going. Don’t quit until it’s done.” Her spine shivered as
he split the bones on her back with his bare hands. Tears trickled down his cheeks as he hacked his way through flesh and cartilage. By the end, their bodies were sticky with secretions, but the work was finished. Angel fell to her knees and sighed in relief as blood dripped down her back, pooling on the bathroom floor. She was free.
Contributors Bruce Alford Bruce Alford’s first collection, "Terminal Switching" was published in 2007 (Elk River Review Press). He received a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Alabama and was an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of South Alabama from 2007-2011. He currently teaches American Literature at Southeastern Louisiana University. Before working in academia, he was an inner-city missionary and journalist. He has published fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry in journals such as the African American Review, Comstock Review, Imagination & Place Press, Louisiana Literature, and many others. He lives in Mobile, Alabama. Jessica Bastear Jessica Bastear is a college student in southern California that loves being outdoors as much as possible, especially since growing up in forest-filled northern California. Much of her photography displays this love of nature, but occasionally she enjoys editing more artistic photos that coincide with her mood or even her poetry. Jane-Rebecca Cannarella Jane-Rebecca is an editor at HOOT Review, a crazy cat lady, and a Nutella enthusiast. When not poorly playing the piano, she chronicles the many ways that she embarrasses herself at the website www.youlifeisnotsogreat.com. She
occasionally drinks wine out of a mug that has a smug poodle on it, and she's not great at writing in the third person. Elisabeth Cook Elisabeth Cook is a writer and blogger living in Wisconsin. She studied writing and literature at Beloit College. She has been attempting to create a viable substitute for an MFA program from within the confines of her apartment and the occasional coffee shop. Her blog can be viewed at literarychicken.blogspot.com. Matt Liebowitz Matt Liebowitz earned an M.A in Creative Writing from Boston University, where he studied with Ha Jin, Martha Cooley, and Leslie Epstein. He was awarded the 2002 Sara Bennett Prize for Fiction from Skidmore College, where he worked with Steven Millhauser. Valya Dudycz Lupescu Valya Dudycz Lupescu is the author of "The Silence of Trees" and founding editor ofConclave: A Journal of Character. Her poetry and prose have been published in Mythic Delirium, Danse Macabre, Fickle Muses, Abyss & Apex, Pedestal Magazine, Doorknobs & Bodypaint, and other places Her first comic book, "Sticks & Bones," created with artist Madeline C. Matz, was successfully crowdfunded via kickstarter. They are now working on the next three issues to be published by First Comics. You can read more on her website and journal at and follow her on twitter.
Ed Nichols Ed Nichols lives outside Clarkesville, Georgia with his wife Judy and cat, Buck. He is a journalism graduate from the University of Georgia. He is a short story award winner fromSoutheastern Writer’s Association. He has had short stories published, and/or scheduled for publication in: Every Writer’s Resource, Fiction On The Web, Short-Stories.me, Vending Machine Press, Floyd County Moonshine Review, Beorh Quarterly, Page and Spine, Belle Reve Literary Review and Drunk Monkeys. Alyssa D. Ross Alyssa D. Ross was born in Guntersville, Alabama, but spent over a decade in Metropolitan Virginia. After abandoning art school in Richmond, she went on to pursue writing. She now holds an MFA from George Mason University and is currently working on her PhD. at Auburn University while teaching American Literature.
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