Amarillo Bay Contents
Volume 10 Number 2

Fiction

The Comfort of Her Old Age   by Grant Segall
Something clattered against the linoleum. Johanna turned from the stove. An apple was wobbling along the baseboards.
"Oh, my!" said Mother, leaning down from the table with her parer. "I'm getting as clumsy as a child, aren't I, dear?"
"I've got it, thanks." One more fall, and Mother would need the operation for certain. Johanna crossed the room, trying not to notice the cloudy green eyes following her. She scooped up the apple before it reached the radiator's gurgling coils. But it already had a damp little bruise. She rose, rinsed it, and returned it to the cheeseboard. continue

The Loss of Good   by David Landrum
The tour had gone well--only that Sossity Chandler noticed Collin Fielding spent more and more time alone, a thing unlike him. At performances he was always tightlipped and impassive, tossing blistering riffs from his guitar, eyes intense, face set, playing with determination and ferocity. But afterwards the driven stage performer, iceman of hard rock, became gregarious, entertaining, and fun. She liked him and liked touring as a solo opening act for him and his band. After performances the two of them had long conversations, sometimes on serious topics, though more often consisting of funny, enjoyable banter. Once or twice they talked and drank till dawn. Lately, however, he had withdrawn and she wanted to know why. continue

Once Is Forever   by David Quinn
I've done this only once, I think, so there's no reason for taking me as an expert on the subject. Nobody's ever gonna achieve that distinction with a one-time shot, but dying's easy.
All the "proper" people put in their appearance once it was out that I'd be leaving Roxborough Memorial Hospital feet first and, if not quite dead yet, decidedly mold material in the making. continue

Saturday in the Mind   by Mike Lubow
Phil is in his dad's Olds with his sweet Didi and her girly smells and irreverent smoke curling like the jazz riffs on the radio. It's Saturday night with the city streets lit up from so many cars out for a good time. And John Coltrane's doing "My Favorite Things," of all things. continue

Where We Come From   by Paula Bomer
The road was smooth and black and fairly free of traffic as Kevin drove up the FDR; it was a faultless nighttime in winter. His mind filled with the image of Stella turning her back to him one night as he lay there next to her in their bed; her back was the most perfect thing about her--long, smooth, a white so pure it often made him stop thinking of anything else. That night she turned it toward him, the night he was thinking about now, it shone gray in the dark, her shoulder blades fierce and delicate at the same time, her straight brown hair swept to the side of her neck. continue

Creative Nonfiction

Giving Up the Sharps   by Summer Sanderson
I always thought that psychiatric hospitals were places where everyone wore bathrobes over hospital gowns, shuffling around in fuzzy slippers or socks with rubber grips, and everyone would either hide their pills under their tongue or find ways to buy or bribe more pills from the patients who hid the pills under their tongues. I should have checked myself into a psychiatric hospital several years before I ever went to one, but I was afraid that I would end up locked away in a psych-ward, wearing a bathrobe, not swallowing pills, with a couple of roommates who believed that they were Jesus and Napoleon. I also pictured myself in my robe, eating applesauce, staring out a window while someone really "not well" sat beside me, eating crayons and trying to talk to the squirrels outside. Fortunately I had a good psychologist, Nicole, and a good friend who was a psychology student, Angela, who both told me that the scary places like that which I had imagined were mostly state institutions and not private hospitals. Nicole had interned in a local psychiatric hospital, so when the time came, that's the one I chose. continue

Poetry

in the head of giants   by Johnny Coolhand
it is of science & art
that the servant be
more
than the master. continue

Morning of the Fictive Funeral   by Doug Ramspeck
It was Zeno who said that the goal of life
     is to live in agreement with nature,
but I have never understood how to take a single step
     beyond the syllable. It sits there before you
like a great root. The tongue grows weary of it. continue

Narration   by Doug Ramspeck
For seven years he has been waiting.
     The moon bleeds its otherworldly glow
against the tupelos. The silence of the river
     is punctuated by the silence of the sky. continue

Ode to a Lover   by Laura Sobbott Ross
We were travelers then, weren't we, love? continue

Quiet Earth of Cows   by Laura Sobbott Ross
Let the rain fall.
These gentle beasts seem so willing
to tolerate thunder, to absorb lightning
with the marrow of their bones. continue

The Refrain   by Anne Whitehouse
Haunted by a phrase in a song,
the sequence of notes rising,
falling, rising, falling,
a nuanced refrain
like flowing water. continue

My Wife Washing Her Hair   by Michael Estabrook
At the kitchen sink,
in her pajamas,
(thinly disguising her lush body beneath)
bending over, scrubbing the shampoo
into her shiny hair, continue

Topless In Mexico   by Michael Estabrook
At first it didn't bother me. In fact, it seemed kind of funny. "You
should've seen us Honey, a sight to behold. All 12 of us middle-aged
women sitting on beach chairs all in a row - topless!" What? Topless? continue

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