Tracy Ross - Selected Works:

Before Data, We Had the Moon

I am sitting before my computer screen listening to techno music. I am on the wrong side of middle aged. I now have a one on one repore with my machine as I stare at the glowing screen, looking back on fifty three years of life. I had always prided myself in knowing that I was born a month shy of the 1969 moon landings. When I was taken home from the hospital I was cradled in front of the TV set as Neil Armstrong took one giant leap for mankind. I remember my parents starting out in a respectable little house in Detroit, Michigan. my father was a mail carrier and my mother was a stay at home mom...

Poem/ More Here:

My Grandmother From Europe Holds Court

Men in suits smoking in the half light
of the small Chicago apartment.
They've come to visit the professor,
who mentored them way back when.
The Foreign language flies,
the scotch gets poured,
a little mixed poodle in the corner
of the poorly lit kitchen
yawns and guards a chew toy...

Essay/ More Here:

The Question of Spilled Milk

When I had my psychotic break, the analyst, upon my checking in to the hospital asked me a simple question, an exercise, if you will. She asked me to explain the phrase, "Don't cry over spilled milk…" I thought, in my euphoric, manic state, this to be a strange request, but I tried my best. I started from point A and instead of going to point B, explaining the concept behind a very simple phrase, I zig zagged through a plethora of reasons as to why the milk spilled and what to do about it. In fact, I covered the whole alphabet and even some numerical quotients added in there for good measure. Yet, everything I explained in circumstance had everything, or so I thought, with the spilled milk yet I could not, for the life of me, simply explain what the phrase meant in as little words. I was confused as to why I was there. Why ask me such a silly question that had nothing to do with the situation at hand?...

Selected Works

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Selected Works:

"The Sacred Tabula Rasa"

"I had to ask myself: what did I learn about writing that I didn't know before?
This was my answer: keep my rice bowl empty! The worst thing a writer can suffer from is not
writer's block but hubris. Remember that, if nothing else!"

Essay/ More Here:

Wrestling With The Dragon

Okay. I have an idea. I want to convey it to others. The dragon swoops down out of the heavenly abyss and tries to bite my head off. Its nostrils and mouth are flaming and its tail is lashing violently, threatening to shred me to ribbons. I take hold of its horns and pull, twisting and turning, until I sit atop the creature, trying desperately to tame its thrashing so that I can ultimately harness the animal to my will and direction...