Ian Woollen: A Supposedly Chance Encounter

~ amarillobay

The world was not ending, at least not yet. Smoke from the Canadian wildfires dissipated gradually. No tornado sirens this morning. Honks and brake squeals and a guy playing steel drums on the corner of Commerce Street. Monday was happening. Summer was happening. The noise wafted up to Roy’s fifth floor office. All the conference rooms were booked with client meetings. By 11 a.m. the daylight outside looked only slightly sulfuric. Clients were complaining of audits and glitches in their software updates.

Roy drank more water and stared at his laptop. Anymore, it was a chore to stay hydrated. He clicked on some background music. Instrumentals helped to keep things in perspective. Numbers and rhythms. He hummed along as he corrected spread sheets. Lunch happened. He ate a tuna wrap at his desk. Who couldn’t stand to lose a few pounds? The afternoon was devoted to transferring assets into a client’s revocable will. All in a day’s work for Roy, who had recently made partner, and thus, his new rule: no incoming phone calls after 4:30.

His secretary buzzed from her cubicle. “It’s a Mister Somebody from Horner Trucking on line one.”

“Tell him I’m in a meeting and I’ll call him back tomorrow.”

She buzzed again five minutes later. “I’ve got a VP from the Credit Union desperate to speak with you.”

“Tell him to take two aspirin and call me in the morning,” Roy said, firmly and confidently, or so he hoped.

Roy packed up his files and departed the office at 5:30, per usual, but instead of going straight home, he followed an impulse. Nothing wild or crazy. He decided to get some steps in at the park. His secretary had been talking about “getting her steps in.” Roy was glad to hear that walking counted as exercise now. He had never liked going to the gym.

The evening sky was looking iffy, with a dark line of clouds massing to the west. Roy detoured briefly to the parking garage to drop off his briefcase and grab an umbrella from the trunk of his car. “Kind of stupid to go for a walk in the rain,” he thought, “but also kind of spontaneous.” His former therapist, Dr. Clark Taylor, had encouraged such impulses.

“You need to unleash now and then,” Dr. Taylor would say.

“Doc, I’m an accountant.”

Continue reading “Ian Woollen: A Supposedly Chance Encounter” →

Nicholas Shaw: A Duet in Three Movements

~ amarillobay

I          

“You missed the turn.”

“What, no I didn—. Shit yes, I did.”

“It’s okay, it’s been a long night.”

She didn’t reply. They pulled off the highway at the next exit. The drop in white noise made the ringing in his ears seem much louder.

 He watched the way the car window turned the streetlights into starbursts like pixies dancing on the end of a pole. They passed a fast-food restaurant in the process of being mopped down for the night and the orange light from inside scattered out onto the road in front of them.

“What’s up?” she asked, briefly taking her eyes off the road to glance at him.

“Thinking.”

“About?”

“The first time we met—when you got my phone number—it was so I could text you the link to that podcast. Did you ever actually listen to that?”

Continue reading “Nicholas Shaw: A Duet in Three Movements” →

Michael Chin: Say Goodbye

~ amarillobay

It felt good to get out of town for a wedding. In the rearview, Jim watched five-year-old Cece’s eyelids do the slow, stutter-stop flutter of falling asleep. He used to watch her fall asleep like that all the time. 

A trip six hours south to Wilkinson, a beach town out of state, broke up the routine. Jim had put his foot down and said Alice’s father wasn’t allowed—even if he would’ve been helpful with watching Rob and Cece. Having his father-in-law live at the house since he burned his down—some careless accident with a space heater—had been a headache. Jim found it hard enough to get privacy, time to think. The old Chinese man puttered, interrupted Jim’s chain of thought, and often delayed him getting out of the house when he had somewhere important to be. 

In the backseat, twelve-year-old Rob had his earbuds in, listening to God knows what. The way he was always listening to something, watching something, playing something, texting someone irritated Jim. 

In that moment of calm, when there weren’t any other cars around, Rob was occupied, and Cece slept, Jim wrested his phone from his pocket and put on a Dave Matthews Band song. 

Continue reading “Michael Chin: Say Goodbye” →

Wolfgang Wright: The Great Escape

~ amarillobay

I’d been working at the old folks home for almost two years when COVID hit. Management locked the place down pretty hard, confining residents to their rooms, temporarily suspending visiting hours, and forcing everyone to wear masks. They also shifted everyone’s hours around, making us work longer shifts, and told us we had to start packing our own lunches, or eat what they made for the residents, instead of going off campus for our meals. Some of my coworkers complained, especially those whose new schedules ran up against what they had going on outside of work, while a few decided to just up and quit. I was thinking of quitting myself, using this as an excuse to finally get the hell out of there. I’d never wanted to be an orderly—or “Daily Living Assistant,” as I think my official title was—but when you don’t have many skills, and not much education either, you take what you can get, and this was the best-paying job available when I got tired of stocking douches at Walmart. Which was also why I decided to stay, because it wasn’t like the job market had suddenly gotten better now that there was a virus floating around threatening to kill everyone off. I’m just telling you all this so you’ll know where I was and what was going on when what I’m about to tell you happened. This really isn’t about COVID—it’s about me and Mabel and what she asked me to do for her.

Continue reading “Wolfgang Wright: The Great Escape” →

Marc F. Wiegand: Sonnet 62 (Forest)

~ amarillobay 
The wood is dark. Tall trees redact the stars,
and branches murmur questions in their sway.
Your answers cannot stay their whispered war,
your night. The forest has become your way.
Only a child could follow breadcrumbs on a path,
or know the password for enchanted doors,
inside a secret tree (3 knocks to try, then ask
for welcome from your good for nothing hearth). The door
to faith is through a fairy tale that has no end,
the balm to sleepless fear that soothes all doubt.
Can you tell a parable where heroes always win,
where the law is sacred fire cannot go out?
Or will this moment fade (as if I never asked) -
tomorrow lumbering from the embers of your past?

For more on Marc F. Wiegand, please see our Authors page.

David Nash: Before the Solstice

~ amarillobay 
Today the woods darken wet black.
In the mid-distance orange leaves cling
to a sapling like parents to a child
when that season nears its end. 

The leaves suffer 
from a condition - 
Marzipanescence: 
a failure of the bud
to separate in spring.

We cling, 
they push - then cling,
fluttering 
in the wind - unwilling 
to go into  
the forest dark alone.

Soft metal skies hold back the first snow.
We trudge through in our bonds.

For more on David Nash, please see our Authors page.

Sarah Etlinger: Yonkers, 1956

~ amarillobay 
I do remember Yonkers, my father says,
when I ask him about his first memory.

I see it as if I am stepping into
a black and white photograph:

the mowed, grubby city lawns adorning the squat
old tenements where ancestors from the shtetl
crammed like the pickled herring my grandfather still ate,
now turned to middle-class townhomes and apartments
with wrought-iron balustrades and cement stoops.

Inert cars line the street like urns.
My grandfather trims shrubs with severe metal shears
that hung on an old nail until we cleaned out the garage
in New Hampshire after his funeral.

My father’s younger brother sleeps in a pram,
the elder brother out of frame, probably
hitting a ball somewhere in the street.

They listen to the train tracks clattering behind them while
the planes, headed for the city, groan above.

I wanted to be a pilot, he says.

At night when their neighborhood is quiet
and the grizzled moon slides into view,
I see my father, toy plane in hand, looking up
through his second-floor bedroom window.

For more on Sarah A. Etlinger, please see our Authors page.

Diane Webster: Shadow Sibling

~ amarillobay 
Lives only in sunlight
beside the flower
it shadows.
 
Get-thee-behind-me
the sibling greets the morning
after, always after
its unfurled petals
in umbrella caution
against the gusty wind
in colorful panels
sharing roots
in the grass concealing
the shrouded sister’s origin.
 
The flower dances
under cloud cover
with solitude spotlight
even if subdued
it gains all glory
for itself.
 
And the shadow
lives and dies
with the flower
forever in front,
a silhouette of color.

For more on Diane Webster, please see our Authors page.

Glen Armstrong: Vaccination Scars

~ amarillobay 
We meet in the meadow where wild
violets once stood as tall as they were
able to stand. (Everyone thought they were
underachievers.) I’m a good sport
 
and smell your marbles, but your marbles
smell like your hand, all Dial soap and bad
decisions. We punch each other in the arm
as if our fists are hummingbirds sipping
 
sweet nectar stirred up by vaccination
scars. I’m a good sport and smell your shirt.
It smells like late summer and hummingbird
vomit. Each generation has its comet, 
 
its Hale-Bopp or Great September. Every
love affair leaves its own unique mark.

For more on Glen Armstrong, please see our Authors page.