Amarillo Bay Contents
Volume 7 Number 3

Current Issue

We are pleased to present the third issue of our seventh year, published on Monday, 8 August 2005.

See the Works List to browse through our collection of hundreds of works of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry.

Fiction

Distance
by Terry Dalrymple
You’re alone, he says and pauses by her table.
Not anymore, she smiles and sips her gin and tonic.

Love in Dead Languages
by Andrew Geyer
If you're looking for irony, Annie, you're not gonna find it here. I'm telling this straight. The last guy I told this to kind of laughed, and asked was I being ironical. So I asked him to say what type. "Comical?" he asked. Me with my heart in my hand, and him prissy, snickering in his beer. I told him I spent four years in the 82nd Airborne Division, learning ways to shove comical. He plunked down his beer and bailed out of the bar.

The Soldier
by Manuel Ramos Montes
Adapted from the Spanish by Toshiya A. Kamei
The night air is heavy, damp, almost liquid. Despite the enveloping warmth, Leiojan wears a long trench coat. The city lies under a spell, the silence of death, the darkness of the grave. As the blackness yields to the thin light of the rising moon, Leiojan, the soldier, starts running. He must run. If he stops he may betray his conscience. If he stops he may betray his mission. Movement eliminates, repudiates retreat. He is committed now. Under his loose garment Leiojan conceals the loaded shotgun. He slides the twin cartridges into place with a steady hand, without doubts. He would have no remorse.

Creative Nonfiction

Odd Harvest
by Daryl Scroggins
I'm a back yard gardener, but not much of one. Even the dog looks on with doubt when I dump peat and turn soil. I balk when it comes to soil tests; generally I just try for dirt that will run through my fingers well without too many clods of black clay left in my palm.

The Film Making Techniques of Dead People
by Daryl Scroggins
Some of my old neighbor's things have been sent to her distant relatives. The rest is left. At the estate sale a stranger eats pizza behind a cash box, and people wander in to dig through drawers and cartons. There are laughs about things oddly saved. I wonder about the smallest mementos, tagged or bathed in plastic bags. All of it spreading out in a slow explosion, a dispersal not unlike decay. Bounty reabsorbed or discarded.

Ruling out a Brain Tumor
by Daryl Scroggins
After the MRI of my head and before anything is known, I am released. "Do you think I could see one of the images?" I ask. For an instant the technician hesitates. "Sure," she says. She opens the door of the control room behind her. Just inside she presses a key on a keyboard and a black and white image appears on a display. Gray convolutions in cross section, with jaw and tongue. We look at the image for a while. I tell her that it almost makes me dizzy to think that I am seeing the image of my brain by way of the very brain pictured in the image. "You're feeling dizzy?" she asks. "No, no—just joking," I tell her.

Poetry

Filipino Workman in Macao
by Papa Osmubal
I come home from work. Sip an ice-cold beer.
See the evening news. Sip another beer.

Maria Clara after Jose Rizal's Death
by Papa Osmubal
(Jose Rizal, nicknamed Pepe, is the National Hero of the Philippines. Maria Clara, his girlfriend, appeared in Jose Rizal's prison cell in Manila to officially marry him just moments before the Spaniards executed him by firing squad.)

The sight of blood is not new
to Maria: Pepe
used to send her
red flowers and bleeding songs.

Mirror
by Papa Osmubal
(he who has no sins
cast the first stone....
--from the Bible)

The mirror is merciless and unforgiving:
look into it and you would know what I mean.

Once Upon a Time The Hags Were Princesses
by Joanna Pearson
          And the moon throbs above the trees and candyland cottages
                    where these old ladies totter, knees ricketed with age,
hands tight with palsy: the ones who went unrescued. Fairytales passed;
          the ogres with rubberized faces finally lost
                    all hope of exacting the paltriest of ransoms.

The Ugly Ugly Man
by Joanna Pearson
Each afternoon the ugly ugly man
walks south along Dekalb
as all the schoolgirls crowd outside the school
in the full parking lot.

Pretty One More Time
by Jack Conway
She dreams of being pretty
one more time and recalls
when men would undress her
with their eyes and she obliged.

Soldiers of Misfortune
by Jack Conway
We are soldiers of misfortune, you and I. Winter soldiers.
Don't cry. Why do you always have to cry? We are
unqualified failures at life. You hardly think so do you
Mr. Buzzy Pants? Well, tell me this. Wasn't it you who hired
a band of pygmies to play at the wedding, because I wanted
a small quartet? That was you wasn't it, Mr. Fuzzy Wuzzy?

Works List

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