Cynthia Roth Leatherwood EDITOR
Amy Waldrop MANAGING EDITOR Mike Kline ART EDITOR MarQaret Cooter COPY EDITOR Mark Freeman DESIGN EDITOR Lee Gardner FICTION EDITOR Bobby Reed NON路F1CTION EDITOR Martha Carden PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR Craig Gillespie POETRY EDITOR Patrick Allen Chip Delffs Shannon Gaulding Kelly Krahwinkle Jennifer Kautzky Suzanne Slember Maria Freeman SUPPORTING STAFF Betty Allen Eric Smith PRODUCTION CONSULTANTS
Heather Joyner
The color photography on the cover and on this page is by Heather Joyner, undergraduate student in the Bachelor of -Fine Arts program at UT. Both works are untitled.
George Hutchinson, ASsistant Professor of English Marcia Goldenstein, Associate Professor of Art Richard Penner, Professor of English Marilyn Kallet, Associate PrOfessor of English Bob Leggett, Professor of English Ted Saupe, Assistant Professor of Art FACULTY COMMITTEE MEMBERS Bob McElwee DIRECTOR OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS
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ART Untitled by Rabih Halaoui •••••••••••••••••••..••••••••••••••.•• 8 "Now I'm Sorry" by Polly Cook ••••.•••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 11 "Belfast" by Richard Jones •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 12 Untitled by Lori Marks ••••••••• •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 14 "Technology Divided" by Jamie Gannon ••••••••••••••••.•••••••• 16 Untitled by Tim Kovick ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 18
FICTION "At the Knees of Parted Company" by David Tulis•• ••••••••••••••• 2 "Bluegrass" by Jeff Morgan • •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••30
NON-FICTION "Iwonka" by Lisa Coffman ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 24
PHOTOGRAPHY (All are untitled) Rusty Honicker ••• •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• • ••••••••••9 VVayn e Shepherd ••.••••••••••••••••..•••••••••••••••••••••••••• 10 John Hatch •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 15 Carol 13ales •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 19 Andrew Griffiths ••••••••••••.•••••••••••••••••• •••••••••••••••• 20 Harvey Mahar .•• ••••••••••••••••••••••••••.•••••••••••••••.•••• 21 Susanna Smith ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••.•••••••••••••••• 21
POETRY "The Jefferson Street Pool" bv Matt Lauer••••••••••••••••••••••••• 6 "Waiting" by Laura Lynn Co; •••••••••••••••.•••••••••••••••••••• 6 "Desert Blossoms" by Karen Hostetler. •••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 7 "Downtown Thomasville, 1982" by Rebecca Courtney•••••••••••••• 7 "Late Lunch at Eastview" by 130b Rogers •••••••••••••••••••••••• 22 "Old Stories" by Jane Sasser Coffey••• ••••.•••••••••••••••••••••• 23 "Terminal Girl" by 130b Rogers ••••••••• ••••••••••••••••••••••••• 23 "The Ruining Moon" by Anthony Eddington •••• ••••••••••••••••• 25 "The Visits" by Amanda Clarke••••••••••••••••••••••.•••••••••••• 25 "Morning" by Stephen Plymouth. •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 25 "On Revilo Road" by Ed VVhite •••••••••••••••••••••••••.••••••• 26 "Leaving the Farm" by Terri Farm er••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 27 "Its Not So Bad" by Janice C. VVright ••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 27 "Iced Tea In August" by Debbie Jenkins • •••••••••••••••••••••••• 28 "By Chance" by Janice C. VVright ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 28 "fishing" by Carol Malone •• ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 29 "United States Example #52" by Myrtle and the Turtles •••••••••• 29 "Late Autumn" by Eric McDowell• •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••32
Copyright 1985 by The University of Tennessee. All rights retained by the individual contributors. Phoenix is prepared camera-ready by student staff members and is published three times each year. Works of art: non-fiction, fiction, poetry and photography are accepted throughout the academic year. Send submissions to Phoenix, Suite II, Communications Building. 1345 Circle Park Drive, Knoxville, TN 37996-0314.
Phoenix 1
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AT THE KNEES PARTED COMPANY By
David Tulis Antony Morsch - but who else? This girl will beg for him. "Big man - " still they look at her, amazed. "Don't you even know Antony Morsch? Strong! Like a quarterback - looks really handsome," she's not hesitating now, "and I mean - really!" These people are no help, poor thing. The indignity of pleading should shortly set her voice quavering. . . .
.
Antony Morsch himself just now steps into his apartment (his word for lending the repainted -"efficiency rental unit" a spacious air) from the lobby steps where, during the furthest reach of darkness tonight, all this anguish is bound to fly beating about their heads. "Ohhhh," she'll look a blur. But, now, a minute! Antony stops grinning. He stares himself over, this large acreage of skin and trousers. An unbuttoned vest will not do, even if she steps into his room for nothing more than - hm! But this is his gray vest which he always wears around Lakeview Apartments in place of a shirt to suggest the truth about himself. No one looks quite so ludicrous. Maybe buttoned would, what you might call, enhance that air of casual disreputability - and prove him modest at the same time, most certainly. How about that! Like a salesman so sharp he knows no one will worry whether his tie is fixed. No no - no, back up. There needs to be a different light on that - hold on! Instead of being stupid, those frontstep idlers there under the canvas awning will say (pronouncing his name "Morse," as requested): "Antony Morsch? Why, sure!" and direct her accordingly. And then, brows arched - "O'you believe this?" - and that Fred curling out his tongue as Antony remembers him doing reptile-like that time on the Fourth, they would stare - gawk - as she comports herself up toward the foyer telephone and the left hallway, and (should Antony forgive them this?) their smudgy gazes would peel her cotton-tail knickers from off her waist as if, under a glaring light, she were strapped out so her parts, openly, could be tantalized. As if they couldn't see enough already with the girl Cindy Ann sheathed so by the line of her suit. Antony's hand reaches for the doorknob as if he were deciding to go back out there. "Wow," surprising that somehow people do recognize him just as everybody saw, and - well, maybe you know how it is? They defer to him in a certain way, very special. ... All right then. So she's coaxing herself up the hallway to him! - yes? Antony rolls his eyes like a TV actor: come on, buddy boy, "There's the peephole right there to see if it's true." Yet, again, this time marvelously indifferent, Antony steps away from the door
as if proud of his solitude and returns to the one chair at his eating table.
'C 'mon, the fun's all over here," rang her cry from along the parking meters. This was an hour ago. A clear voice bawled back, "I was just saying to my friend here," and a trimmed forefinger jabbed at Antony's shoulder, "that if we went to Lord Lindsey as you are so kind to suggest, it would be girls in zoot suits like yours who'd be the first to pretend we didn't exist." She pranced to a halt: "No!" "Uh oh, what now?" said Antony, chuckling, himself a smoothie. The girl's mouth was a burr of cross red, and crisply she came, and with a quick lick-lap of her tongue across her lips hopped on up past the first landing. "And the wine can't be much improved upon either," the fellow known to Antony only as Colvey sniffed, twirling his goblet and looking ever more the provocateur. Unswept grit bits swept distinct under her soles. "We-ell," Colvey drawled at her, "how you doing?" She stood next, a flex, a jounce, to her middle, in the weak shine of the lamps that hung crooked from the lobby front. Up top of Colvey's head sprung a breaker of hair, pompadour magnifique. And she, to confer up her superiority to this lofty tormentor whose head bobbed as if he were eager to pick a fight, gave her own a yank, and "Hey," she said. It mattered to no one that her teeth seemed skewed more than a midge when a smirk and her condescension to words - just now a "Fine dandy, thanks" - broke her look of resolve. The glance hesitated. She would bide her time here only tolerably, no less extravagant than a fowl too chesty about its nickelic spectrum ever to cluck up desire for a flow of blue or green; with an effect much greater than her size she settled herself near Antony, sighed, and that again with her next breath, now yanked the zipper to her little purse - like nylons she purchased Monday from that "ladies' department" window display downtown, torrid red. She went walleyed to the flash of a match first thing. Too, another smell, like an opening into a boudoir where droops an inattentive form of limb and lace, came from
her. "Can't I ever quit smoking? But, mmfaaaah!" she said. "I need it bad." So Antony -said, "You like them, huh?" He felt a hundred feather fingertips touch his wincing sense just so, the goose bumps rising begging down his trunklike arms, heavy, hairy bare arms they were, to pausing hands. "Off to a big night, then?" Antony worried that his question sounded persistent. The girl's second glance aside, suddenly a stare, owelled him; not quelling her rapture - searched, Antony perceived to his shock. With a slight change in the rhythmic chuff of his respiration he inhaled. This was like he breathed quieter - like a liquid as fabulous as thirst, embraces begun somehow (now reeling along) on a noisy shore smelling of sea salt and wood like a towel - here, sniff it, and Antony felt underfoot a squash of sand - like a towel most indolently used to dry the tawed torso of a girl whose hair blows across the face; oh, this is marvelous joy! This world held open, so widely that one felt like gaping, a bare-lain nerve. His savorings hurried sideways as if blown beaten from the edge. A spell of sensation, at first a smooth surface of it like glass, beginning now to sink like the receding intake of a belly quiet between those bony points on either side, seemed to swirl into an irresistible and ringing vortex down into Antony's corpulence to nearly knock his knees blundering together. Antony suddenly decided, deeply angered, "Damn it, what an awful effort she makes of it!" Yet he inhaled her stink with vigor as if stunned to learn by her dreamy blink that the scent rose not from daubings of her "Made in Taiwan's" - but from herself. If only he could blot from his mind the many ideas "such a girl like this," such q party lark, loop up stiff into a pretty bow deep in the empty head of just anybody once, twice and three times, then fingertips tugging to a knot one last searing tress. "We haven't any objection," Antony managed, affording his tone all possible gallantry to make it up to her, "to your decorating our step if you like. It's not often we're visited by charming company like yourself. Good to meet you ... " but she looked suspicious. She twisted where she sat, one crossed leg tilting at Antony. The foot was
Phoenix 3
set to a sly wobble near his ankle, he noticed her voice, its drawling curled tight at the edges like a guitar - to Colvey it appealed. To Colvey she looked. She sounded more attentive and cando. "Sure," dressing up the rubbish with teenager boasts, "one of the ones I've been a hundred times to is the Last Lap, great place. Say, didn't I see you there just two weeks ago with a blonde chick with her hair frizzed and that beret? Yeah, you had a moustache then. Do you know Snapper Wayne?" Her talk shimmered no less than did her familiar Cumberland Drive "University Strip" parking lots on the emptiest Sunday midafternoon, those tarmac deserts in which, Antony might have presumed if he just stopped to think, so many of her nocturnal missions ended and began. She was strayed so far from the fold that the Master might spend eternity trying to unthorn her, strike blind her captors, to fling away the corn scum for which she grovelled, and even then with all the effort find his beaming love and pity seeping out from her bruises - like that purply blot there on her inner ankle, he observed she was pathetic, wasn't she? Antony refused to feel happy to so clearly perceive any difference between who Cindy Ann Shelton might have been and what she was. "So waddaya'll do?" she demanded. "We live here," Antony said, lively. "Yeah, I'm a sales rep for this company Axton Compressors, they sell all through Tennessee and Georgia and I've travelled all around. Well, right now - right, uh, I'm in school for awhile right now, night school - to finish, you know." To Colvey, Antony seemed full of an ignorant weird cargo that prevented him from breezing aloft on the high currents. Luckily the fatso fell silent and took to gaping into the street as if he were going to cross it before looking both ways like a good
4 Phoenix
boy should. Everyone watched. A lone corduroy sweetie, by the looks of her no "hoor" like that old crank who lived around the corner called the women, seemed to hurry to her boyfriend near the trees. If only people knew they could really truly - Antony, yes - could deeply admire him. That is, only if Antony would permit such. "Shame! He doesn't look like he's going out tonight," a wounded melody might be overheard as guesswho sits magnificently in the entranceway in his vest; or, even better, and up close: "I wonder where he goes Friday nights!" Oh, a call for Antony? "Billy," cawed a voice from the foyer, "fer you. Git Billy." Take these passersby, for instance, clicking by in wing-tips and airing the latest in sawed-off permacurl - that they neglected the opportunity to notice him, to be answered by a wag of the hand or an attentive belch of a "Hey," that they paid him no mind while he waited expectantly somehow, judging by the way he leaned forward with a silence that curiously thickened in purpose as excited voices rose like babble in him - that no single solitary soul attended him - astonishingly greivous! People just do not notice, generally speaking, what honestly counts in life. "They don't know but to fall for the trappings - the trap of hour hour. " "No perspective on life ... " on this he ruminated. "Damn 'em all!" Again his magnanimity caught him (Antony paused) ... hal "Them trying to remember each others' names next morning, jerks." And Antony had to admit, Miss Farty Party next to him, this girl topped by whirlicues, suited up and sprouting taffeta from up middle of her pointsome pretties -she sat next to him, take that! - highly significant! The wrenched flower of her perfume ... all delight! Would she scream with a jerk of her elbows if he tickled her in play? Right close she was. Antony could not tell how serious he felt. The power that drew him was furious like a meteor crashing in angry light from across the night. He was unable to hear himself think as he could when he, say, finished accounting problems or talked to Bella Jean, his plul1}p sister who married, or, sighing, lay back inside the desk his trash magazine. Tonight, certainly within the hour, An-
tony felt the thoughts scatter like bowling pins - tonight he would find a dancehall and drink and ... go wild! No stupid University Strip hangout and teenagers, but out on Kingston Pike ("heels and a smile") (?). He would! "One thing I don't like about Lord Lindsey," Cindy Ann squalled, "and it's all those gay people. I'm an absolute hetero. Are you-u gay?" "Oh, no - not me! " Antony's alarm showed. How annoying - Colvey's throat worked. "Frankly, Cindy," he said, "I'm a queer just like most of them, half out of the old broom closet. But let's be honest about this since you are, you want to? Seems like the generous, kindloving-touch of a girl like you could turn me around, make a man of me. You don't need a medical degree to cure what ails - nor any other degree. Shall we say it's not academic? Kinda relies on an understanding of nature handed down throflgh generations." Cindy Ann listened, dazed and hiding it. "You poor boy," she crooned, hoping to shut him up. She really looked resolute. "Y ou must be extremely unhappy. Now look, call me 'Cin' for short," in make-it-all-better tones, "and we'll see what we can do." He worked swiftly on what must have been an old standby line for her. "If I'm to call you Cin for short, that means that for the long of it - if you savvy me, hm? - you are just the person to save me, don't you think? Oh, you've got me convinced of it. I always say, a positive attitude is everything."
~d
then, an hour until midnight. She looked at her watch, sucked a breath in. "I thought your friend Jim was only going to get himself something to drink." "Colvey? He's not my friend. I don't know where he is, frankly. " "Well, I got to get back. I can't waste anymore time here, Tommy's not expecting me gone so long. I mean, all I needed to get was my glasses, so, uh .... " arched, she peered past Antony down the street. Cindy Ann was extremely cultivated and brilliant, her . look said, but above all - deliberate. She said, "I don't want to keep my date waiting." "Look, don't get me wrong," Antony abruptly insisted, and clubbed the space before him with both hands. "I didn't
mean to sound like that." "I'm a big girl now, I live in the world and keep a job," she pretended to be wary and nothing more, and Antony was surprised. "You'd be a great Baptist, you do know that? Seesh, just like my Daddy. You'd get along great together telling everybody what to watch out for and not to do. Big bad wolves and all. Always wanting other people to do good. Don't you think it's their business, and don't you think they know?" Her voice held off a moment. "You're a churchgoer, aren't you?" "I just think you ought to be careful, no way you can know what might happen - that's all I'm trying to say." He looked up. She clamped the purselet up under her arm and began taking steps down even before she stood erect. "All right," Antony called after her, and roundly. "All right then," but, to reconcile ... "Take care." "Yeah," she iced that with a snarl, and "yeah," draped that one glossily over a sigh. Her lids fluttered no higher than the fellow's knees. At the nearest landing she stopped. Other people came and went. Very seriously she squinted into the street beyond the pointy-topped iron gates of Lord Lindsey and its conspicuously beauteous lamps casting glints off a lad's spectacles and the shoe buckle of another arrival. The night hung, coolly, from high in the trees. Like a mug of water sitting glassy all afternoon on a window sill it tasted old. But on the skin it caught the slightest wind. Cindy Ann roused herself to stretch, and looking down at the back of her heels, oscillated her torso up in a tilt. She whirled her palm flat-thwappp! Shiver! And nimbly she dashed down and off through the gates at the club. No, he is deciding, there's no reason Computalk magazine or his Executioner paperbacks should not stay in the usual place beneath the dresser mirror. But neatly. In the kitchenette sink water splashes, he dabs a mug, lops soap on a plate with the brush. Two chairs ... he has the folding chair behind the desk; would he bring that one around to the table so they could "sit and talk" and where she would sit polite and crosslegged - or what? He would have to be up early tomorrow, jeans and shirts to
launder, then to lunch with Amy Watson and Jill. They specifically asked him to join the Sunday School class for the picnic at Lake Loudon - "Guests? Just theirselves," Amy had said. Now he is going to ponder this Cindy Ann evenhandedly, he swears. Just forget about Central Baptist Church just ignore it! He flings from his mind the many Sundays there in his fresh suit. He'd have to be unusually charitable, probably. Otherwise he and Cindy Ann would be hard pressed to work up much interesting conversation. Hours ... an hour, at least. "Football," he'd say with great pleasure, and tell his story so she could laud him, or, "two years in the Molding Division with three raises," or that he was nearly twenty-four. A crushed silence - and finally she marvels, "What an exceptional listener you are, Antony, so sensitive." Her words would come really wonderfully, super sincere, he was sure of it. "What all have I said, have I told - you must really know me," she'll gasp, an octave lower, "intimately! I feel I've opened my soul up!" Her voice will purl, like ... oh jeez. "That's moronic!" Antony woggles his head, wipes his hands. God! "She doesn't talk that way at all." Not that Antony is not curious for her to tell him stories about herself and her friends, but .... But hey, look - she'd be all talked out in twenty minutes. With all that time and the deadbolt in, there will be little else to do. Antony reaches up to put cups away, the towel clenched, left now in a damp ball atop the stove. "Despicable!" he wants to growl. "She's going to be at my door any minute," and of that he feels positive - horrified by his prospects. What would Antony have to say for himself when suddenly now she knocked doubly hard and he, at the rap at the door when with a flop he was jerked up from his tremendous vision into his unoccupied room with its desk bulb throwing neon against the staring wall and all looking so perfectly famiiiar, cast junk like that from his mind - and not a moment too soon? He must tidy up now, make all lines of his sparsely furnished room as simple as on the day he moved his boxes in. Chips Ahoy cookies, you know where they go. And this - PEE-YEWW - a bit too gaily into the basket.
Besides, she wasn't coming to be inquired about. His queen will intone, "Wouldn't you be so - " and Antony selects her word neatly, "so indulgent as to drive me home?" He holds up his fingers, and forbids another word: "Yes, indeed!" And now, a final touch: he reopens a textbook he'd read from hours ago, some papers too - there! and his mechanical pencil ... right! A breeze from the open window parts the two halves of the curtain which, through the toil of the kitchenette fan, hang away from the sill. Antony sits, now in the dark, at the edge of his bed. He wears only underpants. Cigarette smoke seeps from the edge of the window into the corner of the room where Antony's head lies, the miniscule pillow crushed underneath. Talking, someone else passed by the courtyard where on Sundays when he doesn't go visit his ...mother and father Antony sits reading the paper. One deep breath .... .Just now the door raps - he starts! . .. oh, his pants! - his stomach muscles jerk. Could it - is it ... ? Prop-ped forward on both elbows. Is it that Cindy? - her? Oh! But wait! He
only imagined that, "it's all my imagination," he thinks, not surprised. He waits under his sheet, but no more knocks. "Stupid fat slob, crummy fat stupid ~'
But
later a new problem presents itself. If people see Antony and the girl leaving by car to take her home, how will they know that he is actually driving all that time? She said she lived half an hour off, out there somewhere.
Phoenix 5
I learned to swim At the old pool (before they filled it in) With its ten-foot chain link fence To keep out those children, Like me, except with bloated stomachs And no shoes And chocolate ice-cream cones for lunch. They stood outside, Their fingers hooked through the holes in the fence, And stared in at me And my racing-striped swimsuit., I went underwater And saw cracks in the blue bottom To match the cracks in the street outside And the cracks in the houses Where no fathers lived, Just mothers and aunts to raise those children, Like me, except I had fifty cents To go swimming. Matt Lauer
6 Phoenix
Desert Blossoms The rain came hurling itself down. The ground danced with it dust turned to dirt turned to mud. Succulents popped pink blossomy lips and sent their roots in search of rivers. I lay down to let the sheets cover me to let the mud ooze me to be succulent.
The heat came back. Washing me with searing waves sucking greedily at the earth slurping moisture, swallowing puddles leaving the ground in shatters leaving, above the mesa, a vapor shimmer. Karen Hostetler
Downtown Thomasville, 1982 Live oaks .with aged twisted bodies and the silvery hair of Spanish moss lock long arms across the cobblestone streets. In the wet moonlight we run and skip across the stbne, play-dancing to the rhythm of our clip-clopping shoes. Th'e southern ,smell of roses and pine rises in the warm rain and fills the air until it seems there is no air only scent rushing through our mouths and noses; the suffocating richness leaves us hungry, gasping. We collapse on the stoop of Granddaddy's store a stoop solid from his footsteps and all the times we sat there before. Surrounded now by his presence and our past we recite fairy tales and poetry to drops of rain until the sun rises shining shadows from the arms of the oaks and polishing silver into their hair. Rebecca Courtney
Phoenix 7
Rusty Honicker
Phoenix 9
Phoenix 11
Phoenix 13
Lori Marks
14 Phoenix
John Hatch Phoenix 15
16 Phoenix
Jamie Gannon
Phoenix 17
18 Phoenix
Tim Kovick
Carol Bales
Phoenix 19
Andrew Griffiths 20 Phoenix
A woman pays for gas her Cutlass outside at the hi-test pump its motor probably clicking with heat and newness . . Perfume is subtle on her dark neck. Over the woman's shoulder the child she holds looks at me and puts her hand in her mouth. Com rows like tiger's stripes symmetric on her head and eyes large, large enough to see anything, make her appear feline. When nobody is looking I make faces until the child removes hand from mouth and smiles. My sandwich is made by another woman in the back, her body, years fallow, has become amorphous, unmanageable, requiring ingenuity when walking. She hands me the package stained with Bar-B-Que sauce, smiling, showing teeth that remind me of pictures I've seen of Stonehenge, and whispers as if we were confidantes sharing some secret joke only we understood, "I wish I had that little nigger baby for fishbait." I laugh out of politeness or something equally disgusting. Bob Rogers
22 Phoenix
Old Stories for my nephew Long after the clock has struck eleven we sit in the dimly-lit room where my father's voice winds stories out of his past, onto the spool inside your tape recorder. Long after the other children lie asleep, you sit with us, your squinted brown eyes somehow alien among all our blue. You hear, with us, the stories of other times and places, of night walks lit by foxfire, of bateau rides in muddy waters, of houses changed by death, of fox-eye glow by lantern light. Across the space of the room from you, I wonder what forms move in your mind -what do you see, you who have never been even to the dusty burlap den of a country store, never drunk Coke out of green glass bottles sitting by an old iron stove? My father's voice weaves on, hearing the words as we have always heard them. They are a part of us now. One day they will be part of you. Jane Sasser Coffey
Terminal Girl We are talking about death again. Her eyes flash like ambulance lights, her mouth savors the gruesome words in Budweiser saliva, her teeth bite sentences off like raw flesh and clench to a grin. This story is about leukemia and hair falling out. She sighs its terribleness. There are others: the car crash decapitation, the anorectic cheerleader, the unloaded automatic, the golf course electrocution. This one involves chemotherapy and a girl's last words before a school holiday. It is not my favorite. The suicide by burning is the one I am identifying with when I kiss her the last time and walk home. J know she is watching me through the door's chicken wired glass, seeing me gut-shot on a sidewalk or thrown from an automobile, my blood spurting on concrete or dead grass in some interesting way. Bob Rogers
Phoenix 23
by Lisa Coffman It's Polish for "little Evanna." That's what the "nka" on the end means, "little one." Names won't do that in English; you end up with something like "Kimmey" or "Mikey" and the effect is all wrong, suggesting some cuddly four-year-old who peddles breakfast cereal on T.V. In Polish, though, the name becomes a term of endearment, benefiting a child or adult - certainly befiting the Evanna I know, my Iwonka, who is probably standing, not at all cuddly but pretty much annoyed, in some bread line in Poland right now. Mother, student, ex-dancer, Solidarity member, Fulbright scholar. The character doesn't translate any easier than the name; I think only Poland could have produced an Evanna. She was a combination of so many contrary qualities. The first time I met her, in Melrose last November, she was wearing a wraparound skirt, nylons heavy enough to be tights, and platform shoes (remember platform shoes?): obviously the best in fashion at clothing stores in Poland. But the clothes didn't matter. What mattered was that when she moved you saw the dancer she'd been: that proud posture, magnificent sweep of step, the disciplined timing in her stride. When Evanna moved, she moved grandly, but also with a precision, a carefulness, as if she were carrying something precious and knew it. The outdated skirt and awkward shoes acquired an elegance which couldn't be matched. I remember all winter I coveted the green shaggy coat she wore, which would have looked like a mop on anyone else. We shared a house on Highland Avenue this summer, so I had a season to get to know her: not enough time. More contrary qualities surfaced: that she could seem so young and slender and have the flat innocent eyes of a kitten, but still be married and have a three-year-old child. That she could be so skinny but hold so much vodka - at our parties we drank it like water out of sweating jelly jar glasses, with a lone ice cube melting in the center. After a few glasses, Evanna and her friends would revert to Polish, that beautiful language, now moving slow and languidly, now rising in intensity, furious violins. I would nod dreamy in vodka, listening. I heard other things besides Polish: how Russian soldiers watched many Polish streets; how newly married couples waited ten 1
24 Phoenix
years or more for their own apartment, if they weren't Party members. How even buying food was difficult, involving hours spent in restless lines for the limited amount of groceries the store might have in stock that day. Evanna was amazed by the bushels of peaches we bought during the summer - so cheap! She would sit, tilted back in a kitchen chair, and eat peach after peach, slowly, reverently. I was impressed by her courage, by the matter-offactness of it. In order to study here, Evanna had had to leave her husband and daughter in Poland as government insurance that she'd return after her year in the United States. She was homesick, she told me later, especially during those first months in the dormitory. "If somebody, you know, have give me a ticket back to Poland at this time, well I go." English, distorted by the East Tennessee twang, proved more difficult than she'd expected. She was shy about approaching other students, embarrassed by what she considered her terrible accent. When she arrived in Knoxville, Evanna had the name of one Polish family living here, and that was her only link to the city. But no matter how unhappy she was at the first of her stay, Evanna gave no sign of it, never asked for special attention or sympathy. Poland had taught her that, to expect difficulties and live around them, uncomplaining. That's what I mean by matter-of-fact courage. This summer a Solidarity poster was tacked up on one of her bedroom walls. It said, very simply, "Solidarity" in bright red letters. Part of the word was printed across the top of the poster; the other part had fallen to the bottom, knocked there by a black tank ploughing across the word. I said once, looking at that poster, "I think Polish people are very brave." Her reply, with a shrug was, "Yes, well, the life, it is hard." She's back in Poland now. It was difficult for her to leave. After a year she had many friends, and had become accustomed to the security that is taken for granted here. We said good-bye at the airport, and according to an unspoken agreement, were careful not to cry. Evanna gave me one of those generous Polish hugs and swept toward the flight gate, straightbacked, moving with that graceful precision, heading home.
The Ruining Moon Look at the mice and the men My sad moon Look at ice on fences And the house's side. See the fields where farmers Hope the seeds grow good. See .the great green fields Of pea-seed wheat. There are rodents frozen in the goldenrod . Night sky strikes the garden path with frosted glass. Anthony Eddington
Morning morning came trumpeting a dutchman's-pipe in full bloom waiting for the flaring mouth of a showy lady-slipper. Stephen Plymouth
The Visits Sunday afternoons, after mass, he picked us up in the donut room, starched and pressed in tablecloth dresses flowered pink yellow pink blue. My brother's hair slicked across his forehead shoes shined sickly brown. Mother would sit in her car watch us sometimes we'd wave. Zoo park movies the taste remains of hotdogs with sauerkraut the sound of him laughing when we talked bad about her. Sunday evenings the return the house unlit. We were afraid to ask where she was. Usually she was in her room cutting patterns from brown paper or sitting in a chair fingering the fringe of her dress. Amanda Clarke
Phoenix 25
little time for talk, for watching, moving, was endless. . you with my Urban Vanities, Cl8limiinJ! cheap descent from grandfather farmers, Lel~aC: i~'s of backyard gardening, loaned me your own conceits, &I".......,.. hat, and drawl.
A splas in Shoaly Branch, â&#x201A;Źold, clear water, Pores slamming closed, nd then moving on. ; We laughed at the stupidity of Hereford heifers . Bawling after their calves As we tackled them in narrow chutes, -----~Pinnin them against wooden rails To punch yellow markers into their thick-veined ears. If they had known what strength they had, Even in weight alone, hellr-lnall~nlation might have over those same rails.
Open field Brown, dry, rocky, Tractor pacing slowly Disking powdered soil into the sky, Like a lumbering blue cow Grazing patiently across the hillside, Eating soil without thought But serving a purpose just the same. You watched me from the wooded fringe For a while, Appraising with your presence, Or maybe just watching Earth with hungry eyes Turning under disking blades, Darkening landscape with Richer, wetter sQil from underneath. I followed lines of cut ground Keeping tires in proper places Humming harmony to the tractor drone, And never noticed when you left. Then, Darkness and cessation. Hamburgers, skillet-fried potatoes, Green beans and Coke. Seconds without thought. Thirds with no guilt. You smiled vaguely Not as much to ask "Now, do you see?" But more to say "Yes, Now you see." We smelled of hay and earth and men, Declining saccharine soap and water To revel in our essences, Poignant pungency . You arched your bushy black brows, Amused at my exalted exhaustion. Then again, morning. Early. I begged, Pleaded, Bargained, Threatened, For more. Ed White
26 Phoenix
Leaving the Farm She rises at dawn as always, old habits being hard to break. The weeping willows by the barn sway a little in the breeze. The morning warms her fields as it should her soul. Too far away, they say. We can't take care of you there In such a big house for one so alone as you. Nothing but worry you have when you should be happy. These were the days of butchering, harvesting, canning, And the putting away for those cold winter nights. Cattle, corn, and children grew healthy and strong here. She packs seventy years' worth of old country ways, twelve Rooms of memories compressed to the space of two that wait At the home for the elderly. Closing her door she walks To her fields, just one last time in her sun. Terri Farmer
It's Not So Bad I often go to bed hoping to awake showering in another city Knoxville is not so bad on the day before an arraignment at the end of a dogwood trail it grows purple passionate azeleas before spring rainbows appear Janice C. Wright
Phoenix 27
IJUnited States Example # 52" This guy next to me in church who always wears a tiny silver cross around his neck turned to me and said "You know they have buildings for just about everything these days" and I thought, "You know, when I die, I'd like to be stuffed." Elisabeth, my love, I'd give you a diamond rIng, I'll give you anything, but why do I have to kiss .you.
Myrtle and the Turtles
Iced Tea in August Aunt Stella in her cardigan pinched and drawn after eighty years of Augusts. Me on her shinyl-vinyl sofa semi-parched, arid heat pulling my sweat into the river flowing out of the kerosene stove. Mother said she was old, but that didn't give her the right to dry the rest of us up. Afghans scattered everywhere in places her knobby, gnarled hands could reach the minute the sun went down. Iced tea never tasted so good, Minty and cold as the first day of spring, wet enough to keep me from evaporating. Debbie Jenkins
28 Phoenix
By Chance Strolling in front of William's dormitory window hoping that he would trippingly find me inside my steps Janice C. Wright
fishing you have been fishing. down to the beaver ponds with a dead trout bug-eyed glaring beneath the rock you smashed it with. afraid to remove the hook in a panic forgetting to screw the lid on tight stuffed a glass jar of salmon eggs into your front pants pocket. in the bathroom your grandmother screams "the time, Marilyn, the time!" mother comes running while the men watch KTVB weather, probably grinning "the time, the time!" stunned seeing your twelve year old face contort in the mirror as the two women explore your pants. "Am I bleeding to death, mother?" Some secret disease. the salmon eggs had spilled upside down running into your underwear. you have to go back in the den and watch the news with men. Carol Malone
Phoenix 29
Tommy sits cross-legged in the floor of the living room, three feet from the television set which flickers cartoons at him and casts a multi-colored glow across his face. His eyes are focused on the screen, but his attention is held by the argument his parents are having on the couch behind him. He knows they think he is absorbed in the show and he dares not flinch lest they detect his eavesdropping. Although they are whispering, he still hears their words and he cringes at the tone of their voices, feeling the tension crackle like electric power lines singing outside on a cold day. "It just doesn't matter anymore," whispers his mother with tears streaming down her face. "You've lied to me before and I know you're lying to me now. Marilyn told me she saw your truck in front of that whore's house and she wouldn't lie to me I know, she's my best friend." "God damn it, Cathy," his father says as he runs his hands through his hair, " I promise you I was just helping Debbie move her couch, I mean, she called down at the garage for someone to come and help her." "And you just happened to oblige," she cries with her voice rising in sobs. "Did she have you move it to her bedroom?" Images blur in Tommy'S mind. He is screaming at his father and running to him, begging him to stop striking her. Glass shatters ... a lamp overturns ... tiny fists pound on a broad back. He is pushed away and threatened with a beating. Stumbling into the hall, he opens the screen door and drifts out onto the porch. He sits in his underwear on the porch's cold, stone edge and lets fat tears drop off his cheeks and stain his dusty feet. He hates them, he hates them, and he hits his hands against the porch. It was his mother's fault, he thinks selfishly. Why did she have to keep picking at him? He wishes they were dead, and he imagines himself shooting them both with a gun. Bang! His father falls. Bang! His mother falls. But the image
doesn't last long and his heart aches because he really loves them both. With Debbie, however, it would be different. He could kill her. He had been in the truck when his father pulled over to the curb while driving through town, and had talked to her through his rolled-down window. Tommy hated the way she leaned against the door, laughing and wiggling when nothing seemed funny. She had popped her gum and addressed him, but he ignored her until his father made him look up and answer her stupid questions. Yes, as soon as he got old enough, she would be the first person he would kill. Now he looks down on the ground in front of him, noticing where the grass was wearing thin near the porch. It was Kentucky bluegrass, his father said, the finest grass in the world. He is not sure why they call it bluegrass, it looks green enough to him. Concentrating on a thick clump, he spies a black stinkbug making its way stiffly through the blades, and he imagines it is Debbie. The grass seems to grow massively tall all around him, and he sits on a white horse in its cool shade. He gallops through the forest with its blue-colored trees, swinging a silver sword high above his head as he looks for the dragon. The stinkbug struggles to climb over a small rock, and suddenly he sees the Dragon Debbie crouched on a huge boulder in front of him. His horse flies high, circling above her back as he raises his sword for the final kill. "Tommy!" exclaims his mother from the porch. She is holding a bag of ice against her bruised face. "What are you doing out here in your underwear?" He looks up in surprise, with the rock in his hand positioned directly over the bug, and the forest shrinks away at his feet. "Nothin' ," he mumbles as he stands up slowly and smashes Debbie with a toss of his wrist. "Nothin' at all."
Phoenix :n
Late Autumn cold air coming in from the window causing my curtains to puff out and mixing with the heat that floods my room from the heater I've not figured out how to turn off causes everything made of paper in my room to warp and curl. Eric McDowell
32 Phoenix
Rabih Halaoui Untitled Clay sculpture, life size ....................................................................................................... 8 Rusty Honicker Black and white photograph .............................................................................................. 9 Wayne Shepherd Black and white photograph ............................................................................................ 10 Polly Cook "Now I'm Sorry" Ceramic sculpture, 40" x 17" x 11" .................................................................................. 11 Richard Jones "Belfast" Acrylic on paper, 4.5' x 6' ................................................................................................. 12 Lori Marks Monoprint, 18" x 21" ....................................................................................................... 14 John Hatch Black and white photograph ............................................................................................ 15 Jamie Gannon "Technology Divided" Pastel and gesso on mat board, 32" x 20" ........................................................................ 16 Tim Kovick Untitled Pen and ink drawing ........................................................................................................ 18 Carol Bales Black and white photograph ............................................................................................ 19 Andrew Griffiths Black and white photograph ............................................................................................ 20 Harvey Mahar Black and white photograph ............................................................................................ 21 Susanna Smith Black and white photograph ............................................................................................ 21
Pboenlx is accepting submissions for the fall issue in Suite 5, Communications Bunding.