Amarillo Bay 
 Volume 14 Number 3 

Amarillo Bay Contents
Volume 14 Number 3

We are pleased to present the third issue of our fourteenth year, published on Monday, 6 August 2012. We hope you enjoy browsing through our extensive collection of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry! (See the Works List to discover the over 560 works in our collection, including the ability to search or browse through the issues.)


Fiction

Glory
   by Louise Farmer Smith Louise Farmer Smith

Louise Farmer Smith is an award-winning short story writer and the author of One Hundred Years of Marriage: A Novel in Stories. Her work has appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, Glimmer Train, The Southeast Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Narrative Online, and several other other journals. Four pieces have been anthologized and one has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her essay, "On Betraying Family," will appear in Glimmer Train's October Bulletin.

The wedding was tomorrow, the first Saturday in October, at our Methodist church right here in Magnolia Grove, South Carolina, a beautiful town and true to its name. It was full of huge, ancient magnolia trees. They made the grand houses look even grander and hid the pokey little houses behind their broad, shiny leaves. I loved the ivory-colored flowers that bloomed in late spring and early summer. But I liked the fall better, like now, when it wasn't so hot, and the magnolias lost some of their long leaves, which had turned brown and crisp and crunched when you walked on them.

My dress was a pretty white pinafore. Aunt Rose, who expected brides to wear something shiny and stiff, opened her eyes big when she saw it. "Glory, that get-up looks like nothin' but a sundress some girl from the other side of the tracks would wear."

I had been a burden to Aunt Rose ever since I turned twelve and learned from Rev. Weems that "God loves you just as you are."

"He didn't mean you should be a stubborn mule," Aunt Rose said often. She came to live with me here in our house, which was neither grand nor pokey, after my mother died having a little stillborn boy named Ronnie. Daddy moved to Mexico. He sends us money every month.   Continue…

The Haystacks
   by Minka Misangyi Minka Misangyi

Minka Misangyi lives in San Antonio. She grew up in Michigan and eventually landed in Texas via Indianapolis, Chicago, and Guam. She has a PhD in English, and has taught composition and American literature, edited manuscripts, and managed technical writers. She is now the director for a non-profit. She writes essays, articles, and short stories and is working on her first novel.

"Fifi!" Darlene shrieked. "You're alive!" Tommy and Rebekah froze. They had been poking through cattails, looking for buried treasure. Fifi had disappeared earlier that summer and everyone thought she was dead: gnarled, drowned, and mangled, washed up in some lonely ravine.

Fifi hobbled out from a mound of debris like a zombie staggering out of its crypt. She was damp and smelled of decaying leaves. Patches of hair were missing from the small of her back, and she was caked in mud up to her belly.

When Fifi saw the kids, she froze too. They stared at each other for several minutes.

Fifi meowed and sat gingerly down, breaking the spell.

"Fiiii-fiiiii!" Tommy cried, running to her and scooping her up in his arms. Fifi had always been "Tommy's cat," and he had been the most affected by her disappearance. Fifi meowed again and purred audibly.

The kids danced around her, welcoming home the prodigal cat. They bathed her and tended her wounds, carefully dabbing each cut and scrape with witch hazel and iodine. Rebekah even snuck her best blanket, the green crocheted afghan her grandmother had made her, outside to make Fifi a bed. The stories the kids told of her adventures rivaled Alice's trip through the looking-glass. Fifi reveled in the attention, taking on the air of a queen.   Continue…

Suckin' Diesel
   by Peter Gannon Peter Gannon

Peter Gannon is a writer who lives in New York City. His work has appeared or is slated to appear in The Alembic, Slow Trains, The Talon Magazine, and The Ledge Poetry & Fiction Magazine. He has a B.A. in English Literature from Columbia University. John Irving, John Cheever, and Ha Jin are among his favorite writers.

An old, tattered sofa lay at the curb, and Sheila, one of the Irish girls who lived in the apartment below Larry, was coming down the driveway, a garbage bag in hand. "How's it going, boy?" There was a trashcan near the sofa and she tossed the bag in as he crouched down to put on the leash. "Your dog is deadly," she said, and she dropped herself onto the sofa. He explained that Jeb, a mutt who looked a cross between a cocker spaniel and terrier, didn't belong to him. He was watching him because Claudette had gotten a summer internship with Belvedere, a lifestyle magazine in New York, and her building didn't allow pets.

Looking up at him, her blue eyes peering over thick-rimmed glasses, she said, "Where in New York is your girl?"

"The West Side."

"Em, I haven't been out of Boston much, but I know a thing or two." She reached down to rub Jeb's floppy ears. "My cousin Hughie's on 96th and Amsterdam. He works at a pub on 79th. He says it's a good place, but the work . . . well, it's murder."

He pointed to the sofa. "Is that yours?"

"Aye. I had a delivery this morning, a new one, grand altogether. And I'm glad to be getting rid of this old thing, but I changed me mind about where I want the new one." She was wearing a crucifix necklace and she began tugging at it. "Would it be too much for ye to come in and help me move it?"   Continue…

Waxed Chipmunk
   by David Hancock David Hancock

David Hancock has received two OBIE awards for playwriting (The Convention of Cartography and The Race of the Ark Tattoo), both presented by the Foundry Theatre. His other plays include Deviant Craft, Our Lot (with Kristin Newbom), The Puzzle Locker and The Incubus Archives. Mr. Hancock is the recipient of numerous national writing awards including a Whiting Writers' Award, a Creative Capital grant, The CalArts/Alpert Award in Theatre, and the Hodder Fellowship at Princeton. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Euphony, Interim, and Permafrost, and he recently completed a novel with Spencer Golub entitled The Journal of Metaphysical Tradecraft. His essays on playwriting have appeared in American Theatre and other journals and he wrote the preface to Popular Forms for a Radical Theatre (editied by Caridad Svitch and Sarah Ruhl). Hancock's play The Race of the Ark Tattoo is currently enjoying a French language revival in Paris, and will be performed at the Du Rififi aux Batignolles festival in September. He has taught playwriting or held master classes at The University of Iowa, Brown University, The University of Cincinnati, California State Fullerton, The University of Nevada Las Vegas, Bucknell University, and California Institute for the Arts. Mr. Hancock lives in St. Paul, Minnesota with his wife and two sons.

I work at the recycling center. Sorting bodies. Shoveling lime. Jewelry in plastics tubs. Unscrew artificial hips. They leach heavy metals. Wear rubber gloves with the chain saw. Watch for parasites. The big, jelly ones crawl right up your leg. And be sure to check for dentures. Those can clog the exhaust fans.

The stench is crippling. Physically and emotionally. You never get used to it. I wear a Motörhead T-shirt around my nose and mouth. Borrowed it from a putrefied biker. I soak the T-shirt in gasoline. Fumes block the odor. Numb my feelings. The dead stare me down.

Keep your filthy hands off me.

Yellow glaze to their skin. Caustic excretions. Lymph nodes inflamed. Bellies full of pus. Water on the brain. Leaking brown fluid from the ears and eyes. I use a garden hose to bathe them.   Continue…

When I See Her
   by Theresa Nealon Theresa Nealon

Theresa Nealon is a double major in English and Theater Arts at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California. She began writing in high school and has been inspired by her college professors in the English and Theater departments. In her spare time she competes on the Westmont Cross Country and Track & Field teams.

I'm making breakfast, and every few minutes or so I look through the kitchen window at my daughter. Her back is turned so she doesn't notice me watching. She is getting dirt on her new sundress, and picking dandelions to make wishes with. She turns her head to the right and I see her mouth moving as she talks and hands a fistful of flowers to the air. Only to see them drop quickly to the ground. Her tiny hands find her hips and she gently scolds the empty air. Scooping up the flowers, she turns around and raises her eyes to see me watching from the window.

Her eyes are different from most people. One is brown like dark maple syrup, and the other is blue, like arctic ice. Her dark brown eye is perfect, but her blue eye is damaged, and she would be blind if not for her brown eye. She smiles at me and I see her frosty blue eye sparkle in the sunlight. I slide the window open.

"Come inside for pancakes!"

Her little legs start the long journey towards the kitchen door. Halfway there she turns back and beckons for someone to follow, but the yard is empty.   Continue…


Creative Nonfiction

Snowman #4
   by James Warren Boyd James Warren Boyd

James Warren Boyd holds master's degrees in English and Communication Studies from San Francisco State University, where he currently works as a writing center coordinator and as a lecturer; he is also an adjunct professor for the University of San Francisco. His creative non-fiction stories "Soldier" and "Sluham [I'm Listening]" have been published in Transfer literary journal's special 100th volume and Memoir (and). As a writer/performer he has been featured in the Gay and Lesbian International Storytelling Festival, and Gay Writes! at The Marsh. Catch him around San Francisco reading at Smackdab, Retool and Grind, and Guy Writers. Last spring, his play, 8, was performed and produced at San Francisco State University in special collaboration between The College of Performing Arts and The College of Humanities.

I show my ID to the guard and step up the stairs into the weather-worn shack with its peeling gray paint. I scan the wall for my time card and grab "James Boyd—Snowman #4," punch it in the time/date clock, and return the card to its space on the rack marked "Santa Unit." I step out of the shack, a portal really, and into the bright sun of Disneyland's parade back lot. The Mary Poppins unit chimney sweeps, who have had years of dance and gymnastic training and invariably show up to rehearsals in parachute pants and leg warmers, stretch and practice their gymnastics. The haughty "glock" girls—despised because, though they are hired for their long legs and ample bosoms, they are paid musician union wages because Disney has taught them to play their glockenspiels—are already in the That Girl wigs with their perfect flips. I scan for the other snowpeople, and find them huddled together, laughing about something. For most of them, like me, this is their first parade, and though our parts are not as prestigious as the chimney sweeps or the "glock" girls, we snowpeople are nonetheless proud that for our parts we still dance, unlike the six boys cast as Christmas trees who merely push their tinsel pyramids from the inside, sway, and blink their lights on and off—or the toy soldiers who can barely march with all that metal on them.

We have been learning and practicing our Christmas routines around the back lots of the park for hours and hours on the weekends for the past month, and finally this Thanksgiving weekend is our big debut. We chat excitedly, wondering aloud what it will be like to dance inside our costumes instead of in our street clothes. Our costumes, the snowpeople are told, are being completely redesigned and constructed for this season. New, solid, rounded costumes are to replace the previous rather mod, '70s, soft-sculpture ones. The designers and workshops have been running late, so we have had to be content with conceptual drawings while the others in our unit—the dancing reindeer, their tongues hanging out of their goofy heads, and those damned "glock" girls with their red and white fur-trimmed minidresses, coiffed wigs, and silver glockenspiels—have been prancing around fully dressed for weeks.   Continue…


Poetry

Medusa, Unbeheaded, Turned to Stone
   by Robert Lavett Smith Robert Lavett Smith

Born in Michigan in 1957, Robert Lavett Smith grew up in northern New Jersey, in a suburb of New York. Since 1987, he has lived in San Francisco, where for the past thirteen years he has worked as a Special Education Paraprofessional for the San Francisco Unified School District. He holds an M.A. in creative writing from the University of New Hampshire, where he studied with Charles Simic and Mekeel McBride. In 1982, he studied with Galway Kinnell, as a member of the Master Class at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. He is the author of four small-press chapbooks and, most recently, of a full-length collection, Everything Moves With A Disfigured Grace (Alsop Review Press, 2006) (available from Amazon). All of these are free verse works. A collection of his sonnets will be published by the Full Court Press some time next year.

      bust by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, c. 1638-1648 (Article in Wikipedia)

The master's chisel captures transformation,
Beauty's innate capacity to appall:
Lips slightly parted in mute supplication,
Long hair become a savage serpent-scrawl.   Continue…

Metro Beaubourg
   by Robert Lavett Smith Robert Lavett Smith

Born in Michigan in 1957, Robert Lavett Smith grew up in northern New Jersey, in a suburb of New York. Since 1987, he has lived in San Francisco, where for the past thirteen years he has worked as a Special Education Paraprofessional for the San Francisco Unified School District. He holds an M.A. in creative writing from the University of New Hampshire, where he studied with Charles Simic and Mekeel McBride. In 1982, he studied with Galway Kinnell, as a member of the Master Class at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. He is the author of four small-press chapbooks and, most recently, of a full-length collection, Everything Moves With A Disfigured Grace (Alsop Review Press, 2006) (available from Amazon). All of these are free verse works. A collection of his sonnets will be published by the Full Court Press some time next year.

      Paris, 1979

This guy approaches, gaunt and badly shaven,
Proffers a soiled photo urgently.
It's very late—11:57—
The empty platform echoes eerily.   Continue…

The Tall Autistic Boy Spits on my Head
   by Robert Lavett Smith Robert Lavett Smith

Born in Michigan in 1957, Robert Lavett Smith grew up in northern New Jersey, in a suburb of New York. Since 1987, he has lived in San Francisco, where for the past thirteen years he has worked as a Special Education Paraprofessional for the San Francisco Unified School District. He holds an M.A. in creative writing from the University of New Hampshire, where he studied with Charles Simic and Mekeel McBride. In 1982, he studied with Galway Kinnell, as a member of the Master Class at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. He is the author of four small-press chapbooks and, most recently, of a full-length collection, Everything Moves With A Disfigured Grace (Alsop Review Press, 2006) (available from Amazon). All of these are free verse works. A collection of his sonnets will be published by the Full Court Press some time next year.

The tall autistic boy spits on my head—
A gesture more confounding than disgusting—
One way he makes frustrations felt instead
Of speaking. But he has no trouble trusting   Continue…

My Grandmother Loved
   by John McKernan John McKernan

John McKernan is now retired after teaching 41 years at Marshall University. He lives—mostly—in West Virginia where he edits ABZ Press His most recent book is selected poems entitled: Resurrection of the Dust (available from Amazon).

To feast on silence
She sat for hours staring at a cherry tree

The table she sat at
Grows longer
Every day it snows   Continue…

Ogunquit
   by Laurel Kallen Laurel Kallen

Laurel Kallen holds an MFA in creative writing from The City College of New York, as well as an MA in French and a JD degree. In the past, she was a speech writer for former New York City Mayor David Dinkins. She currently teaches writing at the City University of New York. Her chapbook, The Forms of Discomfort, will be forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in August 2012, and her poem "Shopping Trip" appeared in the spring 2012 issue of Atlanta Review. Poems and stories of hers have appeared in Global City Review, Legal Studies Forum, The One Three Eight, and La Petite Zine. Her awards history includes the 2009 Stark Short Fiction Award and the 2009 Teacher/Writer Award.

1
The water calls us into its cold
           like a deranged mother
whose arms choke because she cannot
           hug or hold.
Something is wrong with the sunlight
           and it is our fault.
(We came with our shadows from
           New York.)   Continue…

Play Me
   by Elya Braden Elya Braden

A writer, actress, and singer since her youth, Elya Braden took a long detour from her creative endeavors to pursue an eighteen-year career as a corporate lawyer and entrepreneur, eventually launching a networking group for experienced female lawyers. After fifteen years in Seattle, she now enjoys pursuing her creativity in the Southern California sunshine. In her free time, she volunteers with Free Arts for Abused Children and Insight Seminars, a personal development program.

Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Dogwood, Echoes Poetry Journal, Euphony, and Scratch Anthology (Volume 3). She's attended numerous workshops including Advanced Creative Nonfiction, Intermediate Poetry, and The Multi-Tasking Muse (a poetry writing workshop), all through UCLA Extension, as well as Method Writing with Jack Grapes. She has studied with Ellen Bass, Michelle Bitting, Marie Howe, Richard Jones, Dorianne Laux, Suzanne Lummis, and Joseph Millar.

Set me on fire
                       with your
                              velvet fingers
                                     caress me
                                        with your curious
                                             lips unlace my
                                                 fettered finery.   Continue…

What the Snow Says
   by Elya Braden Elya Braden

A writer, actress, and singer since her youth, Elya Braden took a long detour from her creative endeavors to pursue an eighteen-year career as a corporate lawyer and entrepreneur, eventually launching a networking group for experienced female lawyers. After fifteen years in Seattle, she now enjoys pursuing her creativity in the Southern California sunshine. In her free time, she volunteers with Free Arts for Abused Children and Insight Seminars, a personal development program.

Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Dogwood, Echoes Poetry Journal, Euphony, and Scratch Anthology (Volume 3). She's attended numerous workshops including Advanced Creative Nonfiction, Intermediate Poetry, and The Multi-Tasking Muse (a poetry writing workshop), all through UCLA Extension, as well as Method Writing with Jack Grapes. She has studied with Ellen Bass, Michelle Bitting, Marie Howe, Richard Jones, Dorianne Laux, Suzanne Lummis, and Joseph Millar.

The snow says, "You think that death is cold, cold
as the metal stirrups in the half-dark hospital room
where the intern, looking at your ultrasound,
announced, 'spontaneous abortion.'

But she was warm inside your body for those ten days
when your cravings ceased, your skin's glow dimmed,
your breasts slept quiet in your C cups.   Continue…

You, Andrew Mansfield
   by Steven Sooudi Steven Sooudi

Steven Sooudi

And here below the glowing sun
And here upon this spacious height
The satellite in hurtled run
An astronaut in weightless flight

And over Stonehenge's gaping ring
The battered rock and open gate
Up in the darkness silence sings
There ruined stone has yet to wait   Continue…


Works List

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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.

2012, Volume 14 Number 4, 5 November 2012 — Future Issue
Number 3, 6 August 2012 — Current Issue

Number 2, 21 May 2012 —
Number 1, 6 February 2012
2011, Volume 13 Number 4, 7 November 2011
Number 3, 1 August 2011
Number 2, 16 May 2011
Number 1, 7 February 2011
2010, Volume 12 Number 4, 1 November 2010
Number 3, 2 August 2010
Number 2, 17 May 2010
Number 1, 1 February 2010
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