Amarillo Bay Contents
Volume 6 Number 3
Current Issue
We are pleased to present the third issue of our sixth year, published on Monday, 2 August 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
Angie Gets a Job
by Linda Boroff
Angie is not qualifying; she is crying. With one hand across her eyes, she gropes for the tissue box that her interviewer extends without looking up as he checks her typing test. From between her fingers, she watches him circle errors; the sharp red pencil reminds her of a bird's beak: peck, stab, scratch. It leaves bloody little wounds all over her page. This abysmal performance confirms every pessimistic prediction of her destiny that Angie has ever heard in her seventeen years.
Nothing But A Kiss
by Steven Marshall Newton
The little girl is standing alone in the park beneath an oak tree in the rain. She looks about thirteen. I'm eating my lunch in my car like I always do. I work at the new Arby's that they just built out on the edge of town beside the interstate. I make sandwiches, just like the one I'm eating right now.
A Poor Player
by Irving A Greenfield
Rain had threatened through the morning and early afternoon, and now it has begun to rain. A hard, cold, November rain. I'm with Eddie in the lobby of the J&M Funeral Parlor on Bath Avenue in Brooklyn. His sister-in-law, my wife's first cousin, Iris, has died and we're at the wake. Neither of us wants to be in the Viewing Room, where grief mingles with the heavy scent of flowers.
A Room Full of Presents
by Rumjhum Biswas
Priti looked over the letter once again. She had read it three times that morning already. Yet she felt that she had to read it once again, just to make sure that she had read it right. She couldn't believe it. Why would he write to her at all, let alone after all these years! None of it made any sense to her.
Creative Nonfiction
Wisdom
by Betsy Gitelman
This was not what I expected.
I looked at the calendar, at the week at the end of the summer when my kids would be staying with their father. Still some summer left, but no one to travel with and not much money to spend. Lots of work to do on my novel. Finding a place for a writer's retreat seemed the perfect plan.
The Slippery Slope of Meaning
by Suzanne R. Thurman
My grandmother had a strong faith in the value of words. What you said, or didn't say, signified who you were and placed you in the world. Her passion for language is not surprising since words were about all she had. She was born poor, and she died poor. If you judged her only by her background and the amount of money she earned in her lifetime, you would have to conclude that she belonged to the ranks of the working class. But that was not a place she cared to be and her aspirations, her outlook on life, were pure middle class. She was a smart woman, my grandmother, well read and thoughtful, even though she never went past the eighth grade. And she knew what she wanted. Despite, or perhaps because of, her abbreviated education, she used words like bricks to build an inviolable wall between the world she chose to inhabit and the world that never stopped threatening to pull her in.
"A Note To The Difficult One": How Reading and Writing a Poem Becomes A Teaching Essay
by Will Hochman
Writing is nothing if it isn't about possibility. I imagined as I read "A Note To The Difficult One" that I could write this essay to explain more about how I'm trying to creatively understand writing from students' points of view. The poem above showed up on my screen on a rainy, spring morning courtesy of the Creative Writing University of Hawaii Manoa-Listserv (CWUHM-L). I've had to re-read it quite a few times because it keeps talking to me with writing student voices in its words.
Poetry
Apparitions
by Oswald LeWinter
The shadows swallow them
in small groups, some with guns,
more armless, others
dragging severed limbs behind.
Pencil Seller
by Oswald LeWinter
He sits in a deserted doorway,
legs folded under him
like Buddha's lotus, a tin
of short green pencils and coins
hugged by his knees. Rain
has stained his frayed blue shirt
and the Phoenix sun turned
his dark skin darker. He holds
strands of beard in his right hand.
Forest of Desks
by Jason Fraley
Unwillingly, you become a memorial
for first lovers, a record of names
and initials the missing remember.
Living with Arthur
by Arlene Ang
The last carpet has been flogged
outside the window. Asthma daunts all
cleaning. I know my husband: a wheeze from
the hearth when fire blazes the warmest.
Saprophytic
by Arlene Ang
Spring. Begonias wilt the way
her coats fall from hangers.
My unused gifts. I swore to move
out before the cacti unloose
their thorns. Another month
rips from the calender.
Weeds have no notion of time.
Previous Issues
All Works
- Sorted by author name
- Sorted by title
Google™ Search
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 |
|
| 2003 |
|
| 2002 |
|
| 2001 |
|
| 2000 |
|
| 1999 |
|
Useful Links
We provide links to literary magazines and to other sites that might be interesting to readers of Amarillo Bay. The page also has links to our authors' Web sites. See the Useful Links page.
Next Issue
|
Like the idea of Amarillo Bay? Tell your friends! Also, you can help us continue. |
Want to make sure you don't miss a single issue of Amarillo Bay? We can send you an e-mail message when the next issue of Amarillo Bay is available.
Note: We do not share, sell, or barter our mail list under any circumstances.
Amarillo Bay
Volume 6 Number 3
Copyright © 1999-2004 by Amarillo Bay. All rights reserved.
Individual works are copyrighted by their authors.
This site is http://www.amarillobay.org/.