Editor Alison Ross

Alison Ross Reads "Miro's Scream" from Jeff McCord on Vimeo.
Alison Ross venerates verse. She has published poesie in Mad Hatter's Review, Calliope Nerve, The Blue Hour, Zombie Logic Review, MungBeing, The Medulla Review, Counterexample Poetics, Eviscerator Heaven, Word Riot, Up The Staircase, The Battered Suitcase, Blue Fifth Review, Bolts of Silk, Laika Poetry Review, Haggard and Halloo, Disingenuous Twaddle, Cerebral Catalyst, Black Heart Magazine, Menagerie, A Little Poetry, Muse Apprentice Guild, Mad Swirl, Wings of Icarus, and Nova Express. She also had a poem, "Chopin," included in the book, Chopin with Cherries: A Tribute in Verse. Furthermore, to her giddy bemusement, Alison's poem, "Kahlo Sky," was nominated for Best of Net, and she had a manuscript shortlisted for the 2012 Erbacce Prize.

Alison's first chapbook, Clockwise Cats, will be released with Fowlpox Press in August, 2014.

Alison also praises progressive political polemics. She once wrote regular radical rants and scathing satire for Democracy Means You. She has published similar tirades in Exquisite Corpse, Fringe Magazine, Bad Subjects, Fear of Monkeys, Muse Apprentice Guild, Democratic Underground, Creative Loafing, and When Falls the Coliseum.

Alison has additionally published movie reviews, music reviews, and feature articles in online periodicals such as MungBeing, Laura Hird's webzine, Black Heart Magazine, and such print publications as Pop Culture Press (Austin, Texas) and Planet Atlanta. She used to write for technical magazines and corporations, but found that task more dishearteningly dull than watching a classroom full of teenagers drool at their desks while she attempts to impart to them the merits of literature. And this, incidentally, is why she does that now instead of sitting in a cubicle the size of a midget's closet scribbling articles about the oh-so-intoxicating worlds of industrial engineering and computer manufacturing. Pedagogy ain't easy, but it beats being cruelly confined to corporate cages.

When not rabble-rousing through her verse and invectives, Alison revels in reading, visiting museums, bicycling, ransacking thrift stores, listening to really loud music, watching movies and plays, dining out, eating tomatoes, eating artichokes, drinking wine, traveling, decorating her home, advocating for human and animal rights, feeding the homeless, snoozing, snoring, and communing with her temporally-incorrect feline friends, Quetzal and Soleil.

All of Alison's work on this site and in Symmetry of Birds is copyrighted; please do not reprint without permission.

Alison aims to sublimate her jealousy toward savvier scribes by publishing them here at Clockwise Cat. So far, this exercise has worked really well; she no longer cowers in the corner when confronted with a really spanking piece of poetry or prose, but rather celebrates the cerebral genius of the authors, and gleans inspiration from their gifts.

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars...." (Jack Kerouac)