Amarillo Bay 
 Volume 12 Number 1 

Amarillo Bay Contents
Volume 12 Number 1

We are pleased to present the first issue of our twelfth year, published on Monday, 1 February 2010. We hope you enjoy browsing through our extensive collection of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry! (See the Works List to discover the approximately 450 works in our collection, including the ability to search through the issues.)


Fiction

After Toast and Cake
   by Lora Rivera
Lora Rivera

Lora Rivera is currently finishing her MFA in Fiction at the University of Arizona. She works as assistant for Claire Gerus Literary Agency in Tucson and lives with her husband and three cats. Her most recent published short story appeared in October 2009 in A cappella Zoo. She writes adult and young adult literary fiction, as well as juvenile fantasy, a love she owes to a tiny used book store in her hometown of Daytona Beach, Florida.

Mabel was getting married. To be precise, tomorrow afternoon at three. In a whitish dress with pink flowers embroidered along a revealing v-neckline. In shoes that hurt her feet. In a church, up an aisle flanked by lilies, arm and arm with some friend of her mother's (called Kirk or Chuck or Ambrose) standing in as surrogate for the father who couldn't make it and was somewhere in the Middle East harvesting oil

She had, thankfully, escaped. Had fled the church, left her soon-to-be aunt-in-law, mother-in-law, and own soon-to-be-husband arguing about the banners. Out the kitchen back door, into the street—the wide world. She drove to the nearest coffee shop, downed a cappuccino, extra wet, ordered another. This one she savored for half an hour, staring blankly at the crawling traffic between LBJ and Guadelupe, the war protestors standing shoulder to shoulder with the independent zealots and pro-life flyer distributors on the grassy square across the street.
continue

The Analysis of Dreams
   by Timothy Reilly
Timothy Reilly

During the 1970s, Timothy Reilly was a professional tuba player in both the United States and Europe (in the latter, he was a member of the orchestra of the Teatro Regio in Turin, Italy). He is presently a substitute elementary teacher, living in Southern California with his wife, Jo-Anne Cappeluti, a poet and scholar, who also teaches university English courses. His short stories have been published in Babel Fruit, Amarillo Bay, Riverbabble, Reflections Literary Journal, River Walk Journal, Slow Trains Literary Journal, The Seattle Review, Sidewalks, and The Small Pond Magazine.

After breakfast the husband and wife went out on the patio to finish their coffee. There was an uncomfortable silence between them. A scrub jay landed on a fence and used the jagged crest like a whetstone for its beak. It gave a loud squawk then flew off. The husband took this for a sign.

"You know," he said, "I'm not that guy in your dream." He was repeating, note for note, a comment he had made just before the silence took over.

"I heard you the first time," his wife said, staring at a cloud that reminded her of Michelangelo's Moses.

"Then why are you angry with me?" her husband asked.
continue

In Search of Biswas
   by Yvette Ward-Horner
Yvette Ward-Horner

Yvette Ward-Horner lives in the Rocky Mountains, where she is working on her first novel. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Passages North, Necessary Fiction, Cantaraville, Writer's Bloc (Rutgers), Clapboard House and The Writer's Digest 78th Annual Competition Collection. Find her online at www.yvettewardhorner.com.

My husband, Leo, loved me far too much. His face when he gazed at me in the silent evenings wore the patient, imploring expression of a good dog left out in the rain. And, like a good dog, he never barked, but simply sat on his haunches prepared to be saved. I didn't want to save him.

Leo brought me chocolates often. He thought it was romantic. They were usually truffles with sickly centers, and the boxes sat untouched in the pantry near the rice, leaking shreds of purple tissue paper. He brought me flowers on Fridays, but they were always the kind that died quickly and made my eyes itch as they drooped toward the ground. He brought home Jake, a co-worker, one day and that was much more interesting. It was the first thing he'd done in years that got my attention.
continue

Possum
   by David Regenspan
David Regenspan

David Regenspan is a former editor and congregational rabbi who now writes full time. He has been a contributor at the Bread Loaf and Colgate writers conferences, and has published articles, reviews and poetry in Seneca Review, The Bookpress (Ithaca, NY), the Middle East Studies Association Bulletin and elsewhere. "Possum," his first published short story, was previously a finalist in a Glimmer Train very short story contest. You can read his blog at willandword.blogspot.com.

Taking his truck out to shoot a possum had not been Raoul's idea of how to fill his Sunday, but his daughter Isabella begged him. She had been driving home from the religious group she met with every week—some kind of Tibetan thing—and took a route through the state forest. Suddenly she heard a thud and, though she saw nothing, thought that she had hit an animal. She pulled over.

"You swear you'll come right away, Papa?" She was calling from her car, sounding like she was five years old again.
continue

Romanza
   by Robert Wexelblatt
Robert Wexelblatt

Robert Wexelblatt is professor of humanities at Boston University's College of General Studies. He has published essays, stories, and poems in a wide variety of journals (including Amarillo Bay); two story collections, Life in the Temperate Zone and The Decline of Our Neighborhood; a book of essays, Professors at Play; and the novel Zublinka Among Women, winner of the First Prize for Fiction, Indie Book Awards, 2008.

Stipulations

Last July 17, a Thursday, in a basement practice room of the Rheinach Center, Rudolf Kanter (26) scuffled with Arnold Pracht (41). At the time both were composers-in-residence at the White Mountains Music Festival, then in the second of its three weeks. The younger man had the better of the brawl, knocking the older down—twice, allegedly—resulting in bruising to Pracht's cheek and jaw, a contusion on his left side, and a sprained right wrist. Kanter sustained minor scraping on his knuckles. There was a single witness to this event, Marie McDermott, a twenty-two-year-old violinist.

Kanter and Pracht both remained at the Festival until their respective commissioned works were performed, but Ms. McDermott departed on the afternoon of July 17. She returned to her home in Benton, Indiana, making no formal or informal statement to anyone.
continue


Creative Nonfiction

The only submissons we received in time to appear in this issue were not appropriate for a literary magazine. We solicit your work as described on the Submissions page.


Poetry

I Will Die in Paris
   by Tresha Haefner
Tresha Haefner

Tresha Faye Haefner lives in San Jose, California, where she teaches English and Social Studies, frequents Barefoot Coffee, and shares a studio apartment with her cats, Nimue and Nietzsche. Her work appears in BloodLotus and Zygote in My Coffee.

I will die in Paris.
Early morning. October.
In an apartment three stories above street level.

Three stories below
a woman with red nail polish will catch
a view of the Seine as she switches lanes.
continue

Last Autumn
   by Tresha Haefner
Tresha Haefner

Tresha Faye Haefner lives in San Jose, California, where she teaches English and Social Studies, frequents Barefoot Coffee, and shares a studio apartment with her cats, Nimue and Nietzsche. Her work appears in BloodLotus and Zygote in My Coffee.

They turned yellow at first,
like torn pieces of water color paper
that had absorbed too much paint,
and burst upon the sky
in an excess of color,

haloing the children
who walked below,
like figures stitched into a patchwork quilt
of cornfields, and hayfields
and gathered wheat.
continue

When I Move to the Mountains
   by Tresha Haefner
Tresha Haefner

Tresha Faye Haefner lives in San Jose, California, where she teaches English and Social Studies, frequents Barefoot Coffee, and shares a studio apartment with her cats, Nimue and Nietzsche. Her work appears in BloodLotus and Zygote in My Coffee.

I will live in a log cabin with a patch of sunflowers out front,
and wear a hat full of holes and boots the color of mud,
and have long braids down my back and own a dog named Max
and drive an ugly blue pickup truck through town.
continue

Landscape with Starlings
   by Clyde Kessler
Clyde Kessler

Clyde Kessler lives in Radford, VA, with his wife Kendall, an artist, and their son Alan. He is working on a butterfly field guide for the Blue Ridge region, and is a founding member of the Blue Ridge Discovery Center, an organization dedicated to environmental education. You can learn more at www.blueridgediscoverycenter.org

Starlings roost in the barn eaves.
Some are singing their rooster cries,
others crowd their voices with slurs,
grunts and chortles fudged with sunset.
One bird has sung its cliché wolf whistle
scratching the cold air.
continue

Lorca's Dawn
   by Devreaux Baker
Devreaux Baker

Devreaux Baker is the recipient of The Helene Wurlitzer Poetry Fellowship, a MacDowell Writing Fellowship, the Hawthornden Castle International Poetry Fellowship, and three California Arts Council Awards. Her book of poems, Beyond the Circumstance of Sight, was published by Wild Ocean Press, San Francisco, in 2009.

I don't know why Lorca came to visit me.

Perhaps because I was too tired to get out of bed,
open the windows, or invite the outside world in.

He came through the adobe walls
as though they were air,
to pull up a chair by my dreaming body.
continue

Works List

Useful Links

To find information about Amarillo Bay authors, other literary magazines, and Web sites that might be interesting, see our Useful Links page.

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.

Google
Search Amarillo Bay Search the Web

Works by Issue

Works are published the first Monday of February, the third Monday of May, the first Monday of August, and the first Monday of November.

2010, Volume 12 Number 4, 2 November 2009 — Future Issue
Number 3, 2 August 2009 — Future Issue
Number 2, 17 May 2010 — Next Issue

Number 1, 1 February 2010 — Current Issue
2009, Volume 11 Number 4, 2 November 2009
Number 3, 3 August 2009
Number 2, 18 May 2009
Number 1, 2 February 2009
2008, Volume 10 Number 4, 3 November 2008
Number 4, 18 August 2008
Number 2, 19 May 2008
Number 1, 11 February 2008
2007, Volume 9 Number 4, 12 November 2007
Number 3, 6 August 2007
Number 2, 7 May 2007
Number 1, 5 February 2007
2006, Volume 8 Number 4, 6 November 2006
Number 3, 7 August 2006
Number 2, 8 May 2006
Number 1, 6 February 2006
2005, Volume 7 Number 4, 7 November 2005
Number 3, 8 August 2005
Number 2, 2 May 2005
Number 1, 7 February 2005
2004, Volume 6 Number 4, 1 October 2004
Number 3, 2 August 2004
Number 2, 3 May 2004
Number 1, 2 February 2004
2003, Volume 5 Number 4, 3 November 2003
Number 3, 4 August 2003
Number 2, 5 April 2003
Number 1, 3 February 2003
2002, Volume 4 Number 4, 4 November 2002
Number 3, 5 August, 2002
Number 2, 6 May 2002
Number 1, 4 February 2002
2001, Volume 3 Number 4, 5 November 2001
Number 3, 6 August 2001
Number 2, 7 May 2001
Number 1, 5 February 2001
2000, Volume 2 Number 4, 6 November 2000
Number 3, 7 August 2000
Number 2, 1 May 2000
Number 1, 7 February 2000
1999, Volume 1 Number 3, 1 November 1999
Number 2, 2 August 1999
Number 1, 3 May 1999