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Published Stories

As a Machine and Parts (novella excerpt, chapters 1 & 2)
Lobster Cult, February 2010

Eric tosses night-glow emergency phone number magnets at a 1970’s retro avocado-green fridge, hard enough to rattle the rebuilt compressor. “Rebuilt” used loosely; he brags weekly of having fixed the botched part, defending his neophyte mechanic’s talents by blaming
subsequent failures on untouched pieces.

Born Again Michael
Eternal Night: a Vampire Anthology, Living Dead Press, January 2010

History: Michael has crammed the life of a 40 year old into his 8 year frame. His mother lactated ketamine, drowned his corn flakes in bourbon, and where other mothers christened kindergarten lunchbox napkins with “I Love You”s, Michael’s sent reminders to lift cigarettes from the 7-11 on his way home from school.

Legs Unwilling
Rotten Leaves, January 2010

Max’s father was probably the frat boy who fucked me on a dare. I remember his loose jaw, the way it flapped, guided by so much alcohol. Max has the same way about him. They share eyes, too, always spinning and barely open. After, he hi-fived his roommates, and I went back to the bar, unsatisfied. But the glow had already been planted.

Sarah Palin, 12, Strikes for Workers
Oprah Read This > Oprah, Read This

She wears ironed cotton now when addressing her followers, and pressed jeans, skirts when the weather allows, but not today; she has a meeting in Cheboygan. Clothes, shifts in weight, her diet, hairstyle, the pauses between breaths; these are the syllables to her narrative.

Refill
The Green Muse, V.1 Ed.4, Aug 2006, Troubadour 21, Dec 2009 (reprinted)

He’s been out of anti-depressants for two weeks. He’s been out of various other things for longer periods of time—rubber bands, staples, relationships—and it’s never bothered him much, but “being out of anti-depressants,” he says, “tends to depress a person.”

Emoticon
Pela Via’s blog (at the end of the interview), December 2009

His neutral expression reminds her of a blinking cursor | | | ||| | | awaiting input, a spaceholder for impending | | ||| | | | emotion. His full cheeks the (parenthetical wrap) around colon : eyes and a bored, backslash \ mouth. She tries to coax nuances from him, massaging his earlobe, letting her fingers navigate the subtle ripples of his stomach. He might as well be dead. She imagines this for a moment, her face falling to her own version of a blinking | | | | |||| | | | cursor.

Norman Rockwell Nostalgia
Full of Crow, October 2009

Mrs. Bellin’s husband strips away his amiable social veneer at night to accessorize his wife with welts and purple flesh, like an eggplant leather exterior. “Hitting me only where nobody can see the marks,” Mrs. Bellin says. Tiny Brian’s father returns some nights, when his mother leaves for bar therapy among fellow domestic targets, to make sure his boy knows how to be a man. Taking a few smacks is a manly thing to do. His father surveys the refrigerator, leaves, promises to one day come back for good.

It Sparks
Sideshow Fables, issue 1, Summer 2009

“Who taught you to be ashamed of us? I want to know.
Society, dad.
They take everything from us, don’t they?”

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Charactered Pieces
Vain Magazine, issue 7, Summer 2009

If pressed Lori might remember her mother’s eye color, but distance has dulled the hue. Blood doesn’t translate well through telephone lines.

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A Trench is No Place For God
Nefarious Muse, March 2008, Cause & Effect, Winter 2009, issue 7 (reprinted)

The medical tent stank of baked flesh and the wasted effort of sterility; bleach puddled dirt into mud while ammonia sat in open buckets just feet away, its fumes warping the air. The suction of each chemical step—heal, sink, toe, heal, sink, toe—failed to drown the ambient moans of the dying. Lowell stepped past an unconscious man, his sweat and blood boiling to the surface of his skin in the trapped heat under the canvas tent. Outside too, the sun tortured survivors.

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Globe Valve
Full of Crow, MiCrow supplement, Summer 2009

Within a single heartbeat, a body goes from one of the Earth’s residents to just one of its craggy imperfections.

The Word Will Die Too
Cherry Bleeds, March/April 2009

I don’t need something as complicated as god in my life. Give me a bible and I’d pawn it for a blanket. Though no one would be stupid enough to let go of a blanket.

Reviews: Caroline Meyer’s Hidden Cigarette Butt, Joel Reynolds’s Dried Bar of Soap
1000th Monkey, Issue 2, Spring 2009

Her father embraces fresh cigarettes with a longing romance Caroline yearns to share. She will learn the ways of capture. Until then, she studies her father’s spent filters for the transcripts of love.

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E!Morphosis
Colored Chalk, Issue 6, February 2009

When Samantha Gregory woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, she found herself buried beneath her own artifacts.

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The Camel of Morocco
Pear Noir!, Issue 1, January 2009

He’s navigating a labyrinth of sound; his hands aren’t thick enough over his ears to keep the blame from his head. He asks what they want. Finish our prayers, they say.

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Formaldehyde (an excerpt from STRANGER WILL)
Red Fez, December 2008

He removes stains for a living, those left by dead bodies. When a heart stops, his wife gets cable for another month.

Vertigo Unbalanced
Gold Dust Magazine, Issue 14, Autumn 2008, reprinted in Solid Gold, September 2009

Sick, that’s the term I’m told to use, like it’s supposed to work on me, grating away at preconceptions. Because being sick implies a cure. Simply being fucked up implies a lost cause. The jargon changes. Social Anxiety Disorder some days. Cardiac neurosis. Even agoraphobia. My files say that I have an idea of perfection coupled with a crippling fear of attaining it.

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Eyelid (an excerpt from STRANGER WILL)
Colored Chalk, Issue 5, November 2008

Tiny William guts his jeans, skins them down to the lint. His father surveys the emptied contents, warns the boy of lying to his father, and demands that he empty his mouth as well. Tiny William opens and offers upon his tongue a tiny ball of salivated beige tape.

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The Camp
Literary House Review, Second Annual Edition, 2008

It is the routine, I believe, of the packing, then the leaving to somewhere new, then the returning home refreshed that matters most to mom. The vacation itself is just something that happens between fresh starts.

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Snake Girl at Scab
3:AM Magazine, October 2008

Sometimes I go out on the weekends without my wedding ring. I’m not hunting for other women, but conversation tends to be so much simpler if they assume I am. Other times, I think, I forgo the ring as an invitation for misery.

Exhibit One – A Letter from Alex Fumar
Colored Chalk, Issue 2, June 2008

You think it’s true, that bugs eat anything with protein? Guess they could feast on my sheets at home. Oh yeah, I’ll need your help with those, too.

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The Barber Who Calls Himself Ferguson
Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens, Issue 7, January 2008

The Eye’s hair grows long and tangled. He avoids mirrors, still water, and recent photographs, not out of fear for what they might reveal, but because he believes that nothing trivializes progress more than a reflection.

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Car Dodging
No Record Press, January 2008

How the bald man with the needle in his median cubital vein said he found God felt like what a rape would be if afterwards the woman zipped up her pants, fastened her belt and said, “thank you, I’ve been so busy lately.”

Dry Dot
Present Magazine, December 2007

Photographs leaked of the old man’s wounds. Durzenkya turned public outcry and protest into support by claiming that the bruises were “welts where ideas have lashed this man.”

Our Guy
Word Riot, Sept 2007

If we tell ourselves the culprit sits right there, in front of us all, then we’re free to ignore our backs. In this place of kindreds the last body part you want to have to protect is one you have a hard enough time seeing sober.

5″ x 6″ in a Sturdy Frame
Vestal Review, Issue 27, Oct 2006

The first morning we met—I remember the rain, soft the way I like it—was a series she later attributed as a fourteen-frame sunrise.

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Petty Injuries
Dogmatika,June 2006

Fault and blame can be forgotten after three steep flights of stairs. Pregnant-lady-take-the-elevator kind of steep. I-said-elevator, holy-shit-she’s-falling kind of steep. A-faked-relief-when-the-child-is-born, but-born-special kind of steep.

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Stories Forthcoming

(as yet untitled story, part of the Push Corpse project)
Where: No Colony
When: Summer 2010
"Evenson's Tongue"
Where: Chicago Overcoat anthology from Susurrus Press
When: ?

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