Contents — Amarillo Bay™ Literary Magazine

Amarillo Bay
Volume 11 Number 3

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Amarillo Bay Contents
Volume 11 Number 3

We are pleased to present the third issue of our eleventh year, published on Monday, 3 August 2009. We hope you enjoy browsing through our extensive collection of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry! (See the Works List to discover the over 400 works in our collection, including the ability to search through the issues.)

Fiction

The Good News
by Anne Goodwin
Anne Goodwin

Anne Goodwin's stories have appeared in various publications, including most recently Cartaraville, Laura Hird Showcase, Still Crazy, Rose and Thorn, and Wanderings. Her web site is http://annegoodwin.weebly.com.

Brian watches me from behind the Sunday paper as I get my things together, but he's saying nothing. I drag my rucksack out of the cubbyhole. I fill a flask with coffee. I decide it's too much hassle to try to chip last summer's mud off my boots. And still he feigns absorption in the restaurant reviews. Only when I collect my car keys from their hook on the dresser does he admit he's noticed I'm going out for the day. Without him. "Where are you off? Don't you know my mother's expecting us for lunch?"
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Hungry Dogs, Wild Pigs
by Mark Spencer
Mark Spencer

Mark Spencer's books include The Weary Motel (Backwaters Press), Love and Reruns in Adams County (Random House), and two collections of short stories. His work has received the Faulkner Society Faulkner Award for The Short Novel, The Omaha Prize for The Novel, The St. Andrews Press Short Fiction Award, The Bradshaw Book Award, and four Special Mentions in Pushcart Prize. This is his third appearance in Amarillo Bay.

Black night, wind in my bones on a three-lane outside of Devil's Elbow, Arkansas, my truck's engine spewing smoke.

My head's under the hood when she pulls up alongside me and rolls down the window of her Vista Cruiser with her rumbling tail pipe, cracked windshield, and tires bald as a porn princess. The green dashboard lights give the lady's narrow face a witchy look.

Standing on the crumbling asphalt I bow down to the window, say, "I'd appreciate a tow to a spot where I can work on my beast, ma'am. I got a good rope." She eyeballs me hard, so I add, "My name's Jacob," and I grin big for her. Women always feel better about a man who's quick to show his teeth.
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Remote
by Rebecca Erpf
Rebecca Erpf

Rebecca Erpf is currently pursuing her M.F.A. in Fiction Writing through the brief residency program at Spalding University in Louisville, KY. She is hard at work on her graduating thesis, a collection of stories titled "Manic Romantic," and has been previously published in The Chick Lit Review. She is a native of North Carolina and is now living in Eastern Tennessee with her husband and their Chihuahua. Rebecca can be reached at BeckyErpf@gmail.com.

Betty's thumb bumps along the rubbery landscape of the remote, catching between each button in the cool plastic crevices before finding its way instinctively to the next command. Channel Up, Previous, Guide, Menu. She has them all memorized. She doesn't even have to look down at the words anymore — not that she would see anything. Most of the neat white letters have been rubbed off from wear, smudged into obscurity by the soft searching pads of her fingertips. The Channel Up button is worn completely clean, just a smooth black rubber oval. Betty hardly ever uses the new Guide button; she prefers to stick to her old method, flipping up deliberately through each of her 589 stations until she finds something interesting to watch.
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Resurrection
by Lily Iona MacKenzie
Lily Iona MacKenzie

A Canadian by birth, Lily Iona MacKenzie has been teaching writing at the University of San Francisco and other Bay area colleges for over twenty years. She has published personal essays, articles, poetry, travel pieces, and short fiction in numerous publications in the U.S. and Canada. She has completed four novels and three poetry manuscripts, all currently in circulation. Keeping a dream journal, gardening, working out, and dabbling in the visual arts (sculpting and painting) occupy her when she isn't writing or teaching. You can read her blog at http://lilyionamackenzie.wordpress.com.

It ended not in the way marriages usually end. No divorce. No removal of rings. Not even any discord. We continued living in the same house. We slept in the same bed. We even had sex at times.

But the marriage had died and refused to be resurrected. Or maybe it couldn't be resurrected. Perhaps there is no afterlife; we're given only one chance. If we blow it, that's it.
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We Could Be Dreams for Each Other
by Jeff Kass
Jeff Kass

Jeff Kass is a teacher of English and Creative Writing at Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor, MI, and at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti. He is also the Poet-in-Residence for Ann Arbor Public Schools. His poems, stories and essays have been published in several literary reviews, newspapers, magazines and anthologies including The Ann Arbor News, The Georgetown Review, Current, The Wayne Literary Review, Anderbo, Writecorner, and The Spoken Word Revolution Redux. His one-man performance poetry show Wrestle the Great Fear debuted in April, 2009, and his short story collection Knuckleheads is forthcoming from Dzanc Books.

Saturday nights are a madhouse. Lillian's on her feet for hours. Her arms ache from carrying trays. The noise is constant, a roar of disconnected shouts and laughs. There's bad music too, syncopated backbeats and synthesized singing. There's beer on her wrists, sloshing and staining. There's larger-than-life television with chemically-muscled men squeezing past goal-lines, or failing to, thanking God or their mothers, and the air stinks of fuck-me perfume. Lillian hates it. And she craves it. Can't get enough of the high-energy eager, the glitter and the leaking of sighs, the slipping past of sweaty drunk bodies, the winding down and the full dead-throat, calves-crying exhaustion. Saturday nights are a madhouse, a real son-of-a-bitch, a dank teeming murk.
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Creative Nonfiction

Poseidon's Associate
by Jonathan Isaac Rubell
Jonathan Isaac Rubell

Jonathan Isaac Rubell is currently an undergraduate student at the University of Vermont pursuing a degree in Secondary Education and English. Between student teaching and coursework, Jonathan spends his time writing poetry and non-fiction, as well as composing songs on guitar. This is his first appearance in Amarillo Bay as well as his first publication.

"Breathe!"

I slipped my fins off and reached out to grab the ladder hanging off of the fifty-foot puke-yellow dive boat. The engine revved. The crew shouted at each other in Spanish.

"Breathe! One, Two."

The boat bobbed up and down as I struggled to toss my fins onto the deck.
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Poetry

Child's Play
by Barb Lundy
Barb Lundy

Barb Lundy is a hypnotherapist. She taught writing for many years at Denver area colleges. She’s been widely published, including work in JAMA, The Potomac Review and The MacGuffin. Barb was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2005.

Her breath shallows
when his key turns
when hinges sigh under
the weight of listing oak.
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Ice
by Gregory Lawless
Gregory Lawless

Gregory Lawless is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Ampersand, Apple Valley Review, "Best of the Net 2007," Blood Orange Review, Contrary, The Cortland Review, Drunken Boat, Front Porch Journal, Gander Press Review, H_NGM_N, La Petite Zine, Memorious, My Name Is Mud, nth position, Sonora Review, Stride, and 2River. BlazeVOX will publish his collection of poems, I Thought I Was New Here, in 2009. He lives in Waltham, Massachusetts.

I haul the fishing house across the ice
to the deep lake where the ice is shallow
and groans under wheel
and fetch the auger out from the bed of the pickup
truck and tip the bait bucket over
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North
by Gregory Lawless
Gregory Lawless

Gregory Lawless is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Ampersand, Apple Valley Review, "Best of the Net 2007," Blood Orange Review, Contrary, The Cortland Review, Drunken Boat, Front Porch Journal, Gander Press Review, H_NGM_N, La Petite Zine, Memorious, My Name Is Mud, nth position, Sonora Review, Stride, and 2River. BlazeVOX will publish his collection of poems, I Thought I Was New Here, in 2009. He lives in Waltham, Massachusetts.

One yellow helmeted tree-trimmer, his chainsaw idling now,
twists down to the ground in his swiveling boom, the sound

of the tree shredder rasping still through maple and beech branches, spitting
chips and leaf dust into black bags on the grass. Two men drag
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Toulouse
by Gregory Lawless
Gregory Lawless

Gregory Lawless is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Ampersand, Apple Valley Review, "Best of the Net 2007," Blood Orange Review, Contrary, The Cortland Review, Drunken Boat, Front Porch Journal, Gander Press Review, H_NGM_N, La Petite Zine, Memorious, My Name Is Mud, nth position, Sonora Review, Stride, and 2River. BlazeVOX will publish his collection of poems, I Thought I Was New Here, in 2009. He lives in Waltham, Massachusetts.

I beg the clematis to quit clawing the brick.
I beg my wife to take the washcloth from her eyes.
Itsy, itsy, itsy, says my daughter, for each of my stitches.
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The Irony Miner
by George Moore
George Moore

George Moore has published poetry in The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, North American Review, Orion, Colorado Review, Nimrod, Meridian, Chelsea, Southern Poetry Review, Southwest Review, Chariton Review, and has been nominated four times for a Pushcart Prize. He was a finalist for the 2007 Richard Snyder Memorial Prize from Ashland Poetry Press, and earlier for The National Poetry Series, The Brittingham Poetry Award, and the Anhinga Poetry Prize. His recent collections are Headhunting (Edwin Mellen, 2002), poems exploring the ritual practices of love and possession, and an e-Book, All Night Card Game in the Back Room of Time (Pulpbits, 2007). He teaches Modern Literature and Shakespeare with the University of Colorado, Boulder.

He begins where others have left off,
deep in the mire, underneath the ground
with this helmet light showing him a way,
one of many, into his own heart
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The Pigs
by George Moore
George Moore

George Moore has published poetry in The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, North American Review, Orion, Colorado Review, Nimrod, Meridian, Chelsea, Southern Poetry Review, Southwest Review, Chariton Review, and has been nominated four times for a Pushcart Prize. He was a finalist for the 2007 Richard Snyder Memorial Prize from Ashland Poetry Press, and earlier for The National Poetry Series, The Brittingham Poetry Award, and the Anhinga Poetry Prize. His recent collections are Headhunting (Edwin Mellen, 2002), poems exploring the ritual practices of love and possession, and an e-Book, All Night Card Game in the Back Room of Time (Pulpbits, 2007). He teaches Modern Literature and Shakespeare with the University of Colorado, Boulder.

The parched earth of the Alentejo
where the cork oak are drying, dying,
is the habitation of the pigs
who snip in their hunger every living thing.
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Works List

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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

2009	Volume 10 Number 3, 3 August 2009 — Current Issue Volume 11 Number 2, 18 May 2009 Volume 11 Number 1, 2 February 2009
2008	Volume 10 Number 4, 3 November 2008 Volume 10 Number 3, 18 August 2008 Volume 10 Number 2, 19 May 2008 Volume 10 Number 1, 11 February 2008
2007	Volume 9 Number 4, 12 November 2007 Volume 9 Number 3, 6 August 2007 Volume 9 Number 2, 7 May 2007 Volume 9 Number 1, 5 February 2007
2006	Volume 8 Number 4, 6 November 2006 Volume 8 Number 3, 7 August 2006 Volume 8 Number 2, 8 May 2006 Volume 8 Number 1, 6 February 2006
2005	Volume 7 Number 4, 7 November 2005 Volume 7 Number 3, 8 August 2005 Volume 7 Number 2, 2 May 2005 Volume 7 Number 1, 7 February 2005
2004	Volume 6 Number 4, 1 October 2004 Volume 6 Number 3, 2 August 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 April 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