the prepared chaos of it all

Every Kiss a War

by Leesa Cross-Smith

Mojave River Press ($16.95)

Leesa Cross-Smith’s short story collection Every Kiss A War is like the Fourth of July: barefoot and smoky, pulls of whiskey-soaked words still sweet on the tongue until bang—the end. The debut collection from the WhiskeyPaper founder contains twenty-seven short stories: some linked, some long, some flash, yet all pop and sizzle in their own way. The characters in this collection are delightfully real and—dare I say—“unlikable.” Bad girls, sad girls, chain-smoking-whiskey-drinking-pool-playing-runaway girls, lost girls. And while most of the stories are told from a female’s perspective, Cross-Smith writes men with same, if not more, fervor. The characters in this collection are the kind of people that make life worth living, the ones whose choices are never easy, people who make mistakes and (sometimes) learn from them. Simply put: people with a story to tell.

Almost every story has lived online and in print in other publications; Cross-Smith’s acknowledgement page boasts journals like Carve, SunDog Lit, Literary Orphans, Little Fiction, and Smokelong Quarterly. This sense of variety is reflected in each story, original and fresh while maintaining the central chorus of the book—human relationships—a theme that casts living and dying for love with the same amount of care, with the precision of a surgeon. A trio of stories revolve around Violet, her husband Dominic, and her lover Roscoe Pie. A duet appears later in the collection when we meet Sam (a professor), his daughter, his wife—and later—his student. These connecting stories and the links between characters, help give the collection continuity; yet even without the links, there are similar threads weaving in and out of each story: adultery, lust, Kentucky, music, and of course, whiskey.

The first half of the book caters to some of the shorter, more lyrical pieces, while the second half develops into longer, more complicated stories. Cross-Smith writes prose like a poet, placing an importance on every single word, the sound of sentences, each with an image or metaphor completely new to the reader. The figurative language in this collection is both delightful and odd, in the best sense of the phrase. Sentences like, “He holds out his hand for my earrings, jewels the size of sweat bees, the color of sunlit cough syrup,” leave readers thinking, not only of the earrings, but also of sweat bees, of cough syrup left to roast on a front porch. Another line reads, “He was grinning and kinda sexy, hulking over me like a horny dog all squinty-eyed and happy.” It’s just enough description for readers to see the dog, raw enough for us to know that we shouldn’t pet him—he shouldn’t be anywhere near our leg.

The best lines from the book, however, live at the end of each story. Cross-Smith can really land an ending, and like the definition of a great short story, each ending falls exactly where it should, a revelation readers could have never predicted—and yet the only possible close for the moment. I love this about Every Kiss A War—the prepared chaos of it all, like a suckerpunch to the gut. I am a reader who wants the rug pulled from my feet at the end of a story; I want an ending so visceral and full that I have to stop reading and close the book in order to save my heart from breaking.

The best of these moments happen early on in the collection from stories like “Skee Ball, Indiana,” “And It Can Never Be Too Dark or Too Bright,” “Sometimes We Both Fight in Wars,” and in one of my favorites, “Whiskey & Ribbons.” Cross-Smith pulls away from the story’s present (a widow and her late husband’s best friend, her baby fussing in the other room, a memory of the baby’s father before his death, a new kind of commitment) and directs readers to listen to the world outside of the narrative: “I am always putting my ear down to the railroad tracks, waiting for the distant, low rattle and rumble of something coming to heal me.”

Here’s another one: “How sometimes your body couldn’t tell the difference between not loving someone enough and loving someone too much.”

Perhaps my favorite story is “Hem,” which feels the most complicated and full. Originally published in Nib Magazine, the story follows Mitchell Raynor, who stalks his ex-girlfriend with a six-pack in his car below her window each night. A high school English teacher, Mitchell strikes up a friendship with another coworker, Merit, and the story builds from here. Mitchell’s character, though, always feels like a pleasant surprise—human—and I find that I identify with him and all his shame in this story. Cross-Smith conveys his emotion without artifice or force; instead, it feels natural, like a page from journal, which makes this story’s ending really spark.

Cross-Smith experiments with form and structure in her book, using numbers and lists to break paragraphs, and song lyrics and long titles to emphasize theme and other paratexts. The voice of these stories is casual and light, conversational and raw, like meeting an old friend for a drink. Music, consequently, becomes a large part of this book’s fabric, and artists like Liz Phair, Stevie Nicks, Neil Young, and Nina Simone are referenced throughout. Some stories sound more like love songs than fiction, and I imagine their slow drawl coming from a jukebox in a dive bar, where smoke hangs below the ceiling like a blanket. All this adds to the overall feeling of Every Kiss A War, one that is ultimately of comfortable discomfort, warm and sharp at once. Like all matters in love—bittersweet.

Katrina Prow is a PhD student in Creative Writing, Fiction at Texas Tech University. Originally from California's Central Coast, Katrina received her BA and MFA in Creative Writing from California State University, Long Beach. Her writing has been published or is forthcoming from Juked, WhiskeyPaper, scissors & spackle, CHEAP POP, Literary Orphans, Passages North, Pearl, and elsewhere. She tweets (@katprow) almost exclusively to RuPaul.

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