Amarillo Bay™ Literary Magazine - Something Good To Read™

Amarillo Bay Contents
Volume 6 Number 2

Current Issue

We are pleased to present the second issue of our sixth year, published on Monday, 3 May 2004. We hope you enjoy browsing through our extensive collection of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry! (See the Previous Issues list to discover the works in our collection, including the ability to search through the issues.)

Fiction

Blue Summer
by Toby Schwartz
Mitchell McAllister always hated the sound of his name. It might have been bearable if not for that annoying habit people had of shortening everything, as if every breath they saved might add up and somehow prolong their boring lives. Mitch. It sounded like a mechanic or a bartender or maybe the shortstop on an awful softball team. "Nice play, Mitch."

Interview with a Jogger
by R.A. Smith
No, no. It's mainly the middle-aged women that are problem. They're the ones I have to watch out for. Sure, others give me trouble now and then. Teenage boys like to throw things at me--you know, like water balloons--or swerve at me and pretend they're going to run me down. That's especially true if there's a car load of them, you know, egging each other on. Or young women and girls. They can mean trouble, too. But for a different reason--it's because they don't pay attention and drive like bats outa hell. Teenagers are always talking to each other and listening to their music, and young woman are concentrating on their kids or their lattes or their cell phones or maybe that cute guy over on the other side of the street. But, male or female, those are relative rarities.

Piss Poor
by Brian Moore
Tim Flannery had everything figured out until the Discovery Channel shot it to hell.

Tails
by Lowell Mick White
Brilliant October day, brilliant soft evening: clear blue and sunshiny, the maples turning red, the hickories yellow, contrails from passing jetliners streaking cream across the sky--and when I came into the house it was dark, and the heat hit me like a hammer. My grandfather was sitting in his wheelchair in front of the gas stove with the fire turned up high.

Creative Nonfiction

Soul Searching
by Sherri Linn Kline
When I was seventeen my favorite cousin gave me some presents to celebrate the fact that I was leaving the family and going on my own right after I graduated. It was a set of cobalt blue glasses that he'd carefully cut from old Milk of Magnesia bottles, using some sort of mail order Ronco toy. They were beautiful, the deep blue of a twilight sky, the rims absolutely even and sanded smooth until their rounded edges shone.

The Trading Game
by Robert W. Leibold Jr.
Grown men and teenagers line the glass counter as we enter the dimly lit store nestled between a barbershop and a used CD outlet in a strip center on the other side of town.

Poetry

Biscuits and Lies
by Suzy Nelson
Novella was hot.
A new dyed updo, crimson lips hugging
teeth this big.

Clearly, On a Trampoline
by Laura McCullough
I've turned off the TV, killed the Internet,
my cell phone's in a drawer. I'm going

to paint. The window faces the woods,
naked still, the only hint of spring next

door: the neighbor's pussy willow tree.
I can almost see the road and the billboard

Farmers Have Gone
by Joanna M. Weston
they left the land
to ox-eye daisies
buttercups, wheat-grass
and white-tail deer

A Reading
by Gary Swaim
She was an apparition
as she materialized before her audience
wearing literary dignity like a cloak wrapped
blackly about a thin frame. She read, light
frothy poems at first, evoking mandatory
titters from a gathering of knowing listeners
dressed in polite gray.

Tempest Following Fortunes
by Tara Powell
Hands that touch this fortune
shall stay young and strong.

We are miles inside safety for now.
I tilt my cup, watch shredded leaves turn
a brown, ragged kaleidoscope;
but inside it, I see a storm
devouring sand, swallowing the sound
as her maw closes over the coast--
her bite a fervent gnashing of elements.

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You can use Google to find works that appeared in Amarillo Bay. (Note that the search results may not include authors and works in the current issue.) You also can use Google to search the World Wide Web.

Works by Issue

2004	Volume 6 Number 2, 3 May, 2004 Volume 6 Number 1, 2 February, 2004
2003	Volume 5 Number 4, 3 November, 2003 Volume 5 Number 3, 4 August, 2003 Volume 5 Number 2, 5 May, 2003 Volume 5 Number 1, 3 February, 2003
2002	Volume 4 Number 4, 4 November, 2002 Volume 4 Number 3, 5 August, 2002 Volume 4 Number 2, 6 May, 2002 Volume 4 Number 1, 4 February, 2002
2001	Volume 3 Number 4, 5 November, 2001 Volume 3 Number 3, 6 August, 2001 Volume 3 Number 2, 7 May, 2001 Volume 3 Number 1, 5 February, 2001
2000	Volume 2 Number 4, 6 November, 2000 Volume 2 Number 3, 7 August, 2000 Volume 2 Number 2, 1 May, 2000 Volume 2 Number 1, 7 February, 2000
1999	Volume 1 Number 3, 1 November, 1999 Volume 1 Number 2, 2 August, 1999 Volume 1 Number 1, 3 May, 1999

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Amarillo Bay
Volume 6 Number 2

Amarillo Bay Contents Volume 6 Number 2