Phoenix - Fall 1988

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Laura Smith Editor Nancy Swong Managing Editor Roopali Kambo Designer Kristen Capehart Designer Assistant Shane Sanders Art Editor Danny Collier Poetry Editor Bonnie Priebel Fiction Editor Laura Atkinson Non-Fiction Editor Derek Johnson Copy Editor Kelly Dodson Vita Jacobs Kristin Leydig Robert Malcolm Support Staff

The front cover features an intaglio print by Beverly Brecht entitled "Could It Be As Simple As A Curse." It has been reproduced here in four process colors with silver foil stamping to simulate the metallic patina that is part of its design.

The back cover features an untitled photograph by Regina Falcon.

Copyright 1988 by the University oj aennessee. Jlll rights reserveo by the inoivioual contributors. Phoenix is prepareo camera-reaoy by stuoent staff members anO is publisheo twice each year. Works of art, fiction, non-fiction, anO poetry are accepteo throughout the acaoemic year. SenO submissions to Phoenix, 'Room 5, Communications 13uiloing, 1345 Circle Park 'Drive, Knoxville, aN 37996-0314.

ART

u. T.

Archives

6 Motion Charlie Pate 8 Untitled Lee Roberts King 9 Framework Melanie Bagby 10 Aquaduct Patti Whitaker 17 Untitled Alfred Yarborough 18 Untitled Judith Condon 19 Section 12-A Patti Whitaker 20 Untitled Jay Lintecume 23 Untitled

Tong Si 24 Untitled Lee Roberts King 25 Untitled Judith Condon

FICTION 2 Loveblood Among the Dogs Leslie Garrett 26 The Outlaw Pamela Gillis

POETRY 5 Clouds Are Real Mike Brannon

7 Bud's Gift John Parker 11

Proverbs Linda P. Burggraf

12 A Few Peaches

John Parker 13 Loving Down On Maudlin Street

Richard K. Allison 21

The Song We Sang David M. Harris

22 At the School For the Deaf

Pamela Gillis 28 I Dropped My Cheerios In the

Fifth Dimension Allison Carey 29 No Frill, No Lace, Just

Anthony Reagan

NON-FICTION 14 Untitled Laura Atkinson

His friend said, "First thing, you should forgive my intrusion on what maybe you call your love life, but is possible you got no woman acquaintances ain't dogs?"

They were sitting over coffee in a Third Avenue grill.

Loveblood sat with one of his long arms over the arm of an empty chair - a habit that always annoyed his friend.

"What I mean," he continued, "I sit in my apartment and I say to myself, 'Loveblood - he's going up with another one.' Instance, Friday one week today, you go up, and I see she's not just a little beat up and old like the others, this one gets a blue ribbon for dogs."

"She had a very nice personality, H Loveblood said.

"Personality I couldn't vouch for; age, yes. You like old women, Loveblood?"

"I find," Loveblood said in that high voice, "that they are sympathetic to my problem."

"Sympathy you get from Dear Abby," his friend said.

"Understand, I ain't criticizing just so I have something to do with my free time. Why I'm criticizing, I knew your father so well he was a good friend; and when he was dying 1 said, 'Loveblood, I keep one eye on your boy sometimes so I see he does good.' 1 want you to know 2

that so when I see you take up to your apartment these dogs what are old enough to be your mother 1 got to tell you something. " Loveblood looked down his long nose at him.

"And while we're on subject apartments," his friend went on, "I think I should say right off you got a nut loose there too. Maybe now you got to be swinging single? With all them dickeys hanging?"

"Mobiles," Loveblood said.

But his friend went on without pausing: " ... and like maybe Rudolph Valentino's tent in The SheiK! Is this for seducing ladies old enough to be your mothers? And while here, will ask one more question: Why, please, pillows on the floor?"

With this he leaned back and lit a cigar and waited.

Loveblood looked down his nose again and did not answer.

"I see. Seduction. For old ladies you got to have little lights and all them dickeys hanging and pillows like in Rudolph Valentino's tent. I don't know; maybe you got something. Maybe we all been missing s.0mething." He leaned forward now on the table with his large cigar and said, "Loveblood, I talk to you like your own father would he was here. Get hold. Make something

with your life."

At last Loveblood straightened his long body on the chair. He said, "I have always made very路sincere efforts to acclimate,myself. I do not see that my apartment or the age of my friends is of any consequence. " His friend just looked at him through the voluminous smoke of his cigar. He squinted~ '~t see," he said at last. "OkaY1 maybe these things got no consequence, like the fact you got to wear rubbers when it don't rain or snow."

Loveblood started to answer, but his friend held up a hand commandingly, palm forward like, a policeman.

"1\lso," he said. "Also the fact that maybe there's something little wrong when you carry umbrella when it don't rain. Like on the sunniest days when J seen you carry it."

This time genuine surprise registered on Loveblood's face., and he half-lifted the umbrella resting between his legs.

"Not," his friend continued, "I got anything against umbrellas. My friend Kublitz you may know is fine gentleman makes very fine quality umbrellas, so I should be struck dead before I say one word against umbrellas. But you could tell me, Loveblood, about that umbrella you can't never

be

separat~d

from?"

Loveblood just looked at the half-raised umbrella.

"No? Okay, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I don't know nothing about umbrellas eithet:.

This is always possible. But in this case I got some observations to make. First, Loveblood, I want it should be made perfectly clear here and now I got nothing against umbrellas. I go fartber even and say I got no objections a man wants to be careful takes his umbrella with him when maybe it could rain. No Qbjections.

Okay? Am"I being fair? Would you say with this attitude I got a campaign on. against umbrellas?" .~ !-oveblood shifted uneasily.

"Okay. So now we determined I got as liberal an attitude about umbrellas as next man, we pass on. There is no one looks at you,Loveblood, can say you ain't a nice~looking man. You got, Loveblood, furthrmore, a'very nice taste in clothes I even envy. Not once have I seen you when you wasn't dressed nice with even a nice clean shirt and tie." He paused to brush a cigar ash from his own rumpled vest.

"So, we got first I am' the world's most unprejudiced man about umbrellas. And second, you got nothing wrong with your personal appearance to

speak of, answer please this question of why whenever I see you and you got your umbrella with you 1 got the feeling I want to scream?"

After this long speech, he paused for breath and looked over at Loveblood, who was squirming now on his chair.

"Loveblood, ;, his friend said, "it's got dickey birds on it. " Loveblood started to say something, then stopped. He cleared his throat. "First of all," he said at last, "as you .well know, I am very susceptible t1> colds which is the reason I have always to have an umbrella with me-" "Dickey birds, Loveblood, "his friend repeated. He reached across the table and flicked with a .finger one of the toy plastic birds of all colors that hung by wires from each rib of tqe pink umbrella. The bird swung out, and then jerked up and down for a moment as if panting.

Loveblood just stared.

"Okay," his friend said finally, "we will drop that topic of conversation for the time being and go on to the main issue, which is why I asked you here.

What is to come of your future, Loveblood?"

"I am very comfortably situated now, thank you," Loveblood said, with just a

trace of a sneer.

"I am sure, H his friend said. "However, we will discuss this subject, as it is one I know is dear to the heart of every thirty-eight.:year-old boy.

Loveblood watched as he saw the long ash on his friend's cigar bend precariously down, hover a moment, and then fall soundlessly into his cold cup of coffee. He had resisted an impulse to catch it before it was too late. Now he sat staring at the slowly dissolving ash with an expression of horror . His friend pushed the cup away to bring Loveblood's attention back to the topic of conversation.

He said, "Loveblood, I confess in the past I have worried that maybe you wasn't going to have such a bright future as c0uld be expected. But that maybe you got to look around a little first so to see what you want to do. I confess to you now I once got these thoughts. I said.this when you was twenty; I said this again when you was thirty; but ,now that you are thirty-eight, Loveblood, I must admit I got less optimism."

Loveblood cleared his throat. Then he said, "I have a job now in.which I am very interested. I have every hope that .soon I will even be promoted with a raise in salary."

His friend nodded. He was 3

watching Loveblood steadily.

Loveblood continued, however, still in that high voice.

"This is a position with the Transit Authority of this city. I have been employed there now nearly a year to my satisfaction. " After"a long pause. his friend sighed. He said in a very toneless voice, "Loveblood, please tell, without unnecessary words please: This job-it is as cashier on Lexington Avenue subway? This is true?"

Loveblood nodded; then he added quickly, stubbornly, "It is a very nice job with many opportunities to view life."

"Ah," his friend said. "It is viewing life we got up for discussion now. Philosophy."

Loveblood hurried on. He said, "Also there are many benefits such as life insurance and paid annual sick leave, both of which I am now eligible for."

Loveblood might have gone on, but again his friend held up that commanding hand.

"I am sure," he said.

"However, now here I would like to capitulate for us a little history. Mehtion names I will not; either will I make some guess how many jobs is it you had in these years brought you to this great height. First, memory serves me, you was once a salesman for fish market, but you discover you don't like smell of fish. Then another you got charge of boy camp's group and you got lost in woods two days. Then other time you was reading books to old man but you said you got nervous because he is moving his lips when you was reading to' him. All of before isolated incidents. I could name more.

But now at summit of careers you are making fares in cage on Lexington Avenue subway.

4

Loveblood, is it always now you are going to be in employ the Lexington Avenue subway? At age thirty-eight, is this what you got for your life?" '" "I do not adjust very well to our society," Loveblood said.

"Adjust! Adjust!" his friend said suddenly, with passion for the first time. "You think maybe only you got problems to adjust to our society?

Thirty years now I been in the garment industry, and sometimes 1 think I never will 1 adjust. But I adjust. You think, Loveblood, the world asks so much you can't do a little thing like adjust sometimes?"

They were silent .for a long time. Finally Loveblood said, "I will think about what you say as I know you are thinking only of my best interests."

"God knows this is true."

"Furthermore," Loveblood went on, carried away with his eloquence, "I will give additional thought to your criticisms of my behavior."

"You will throwaway tlie umbrella, Loveblood?"

Loveblood stiffened.

"The dickey birds, Loveblood?"

Loveblood looked down his nose but did not speak.

His friend sighed. Then he rose wearily, for the first time that night showing his age, and put on his heavy dark overcoat and hat.

Loveblood rose very tall beside him, and a moment later they were standing outside the grill in the chill night air.

His friend said, "I am glad we had talk, Loveblood."

But Loveblood did not answer; he just stood, wrapped in coat and scarf, looking down at him with slightly raised eyebrows.

A moment later his friend

hurried off down Third Avenue, hunching against the wind.

Loveblood watched until he was out of sight and then he too walked off. He would walk a few seconds and then do a little hopping step; then walk on again a few seconds and repeat the curious step. When he reached Broadway, he raised his umbrella and opened it. He pushed a button in the handle of the umbrella, and slowly it began to creak and circle above his head, the little birds swaying gently upon;their wires. Then he pushed another button, and there came from it the delicate sounds of chimes playing "April Showers," and the little birds creaked reund and round.

Loveblood walked faster still, repeating more often his little hopping step and overtaking people Sticking out his tongue at them and other passers-by as he went. .ce.$lie garrett

5

BUD'S GIFT I put away the things you gave me when you died.

But a month ago I took the cold telescope out of my closet and began looking through it in daytime, in nightime.

Last week the moon was a horn.

Tonight it is a slight smile aimed at Venus which is full.

John Parker

7

8

UNTITLED

Eee :Roberts King

FRAMEWORK

Melanie Bagby

9

Let seem be the fi nale Stop looking for your father and/or Mr. Goodbar with nuts.

The man-in-the-moon is more in reach, and probably cooks.

Say to men from Connecticut, I'd like to kiss you, but I just washed my hair.

Take the zipless fuck (which Jong herself never even got) and run, baby, run.

Strike inactive phrases from your vocabulary, such as, The name of the place is I like it like that.

Start appreciating rebuilt carburetors .

It does not do to admire yourself so.

No man will hold your throat like a Ming vase and tell you what you have missed since you were born.

Never be taken at midmonth, when your hand goes for everything, and everything is cake.

Nor at completed month, when your breasts redouble like earth or coal beds craving air.

Say three times in the mirror: I am the word and the flesh, made real, the on Iy real!

I have seen the future, and it is not.

Allow the kitten to nurse the male in frustration.

This is not pathetic, or sad.

This is the way of the world.

Einaa P. 'Burggraf 11

Loving Down on Maudlin Street "I was a homosexual cow in Brazil in my other life," said the boy with the peculiar lisp on his lips.

"Life is a cycle in which we all rotate.

And our souls are eternal, returning again and again to new vessels.

Consistency and inconsistency-things change but remain the same."

He paused, crossed his legs, and took a long drag from the cigarette.

"I've never believed in God," he sighed, "because he's never believed in me.

I don't think He knows my name-I've heard him call me Sodom and even Gomorrah.

Hell, my name's Steve."

After taking a long breath, "Like I said before, things change but remain the same.

Look at me: I'm definitely not a cow and I sure as hell don't live in BraziL" He sighed one final time.

"Now kiss me." :RicharJ K. 7l11ison

13

Universit of Tennesse -Knoxville s Alumni Gym, Coretta Scott King, wife of the late civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., offered a challenge to the students and faculty of UTK. She challenged them to be an example for colleges and universities across America by becoming the front-runners in promoting racial equality on campus, and, in turn, becoming the new, visible leaders in our country's continuing struggle toward better race relations.

As a member of King's audience and a UTK student, I found her words provocative because of the questions they brought to mind. Does the UTK community have the capability, the people and the interest in issues necessary to prove itself a leader in reform? Or maybe the more appropriate question would be, for a campus ,such as ours that so often seems stifled by apathy, Does UTK even care enough about race relations to try?

The UTK community could be looked at as a sort of microcosm of the real world, containing representatives of the eclectic mix of people, cultures, and attitudes that make up our nation, and from this perspective one could first examine the country's climate and capacity for social reform as a whole.

Arthur Schlesinger, a prominent American historian, has studied the events during and surrounding the surge of civil rights activism in the 1950s and 1960s, and he has evaluated them within the spectrum of his theories about the 14

In

bursts," Schlesinger said, "which after a while people must step back to swallow and digest. .. People get tired, disenchanted, and are ready to let natural changes take their course. " He said that people need inspiration, a detonating issue, that will spark their interest and pull them together in quest of a common goal.

If Schlesinger's cyclical theory holds true, then the neo-conservatism of the Reagan era has been ,a prime example of his described laissez-faire phase of protecting private interests and "leaving well enough alone."

If the cycle is swinging back around, then the feelings of restlessness and desire for change left after the digestion is over should soon be sending Americans in less self-centered directions.

So what will be the new detonating issue for civil rights reform? Certainly the recent marches in Georgia's Forsythe County have shown that black Americans are not fprgetting or giving up the battle for racial equality. Sym-

,

oming of it.

Positive actions report include: "Specific prohibitions forbidding the use of 'racial slurs, epithets, and related activities' ," for both students and employees; the future evaluation of supervisors with respect to affirmative action efforts; and the design of programs for students and faculty dealing with cultural diversity and sensitivity to the needs of minority students. (The report sometimes uses the ambiguous phrase "sensitive to" an issue, rather than "doing something about" it, but recognition of the problems is an encouraging start.)

The report also states, "Maj or efforts are made to guarantee a reasonable representation of minorities in each pool of candidates" considered for teaching positions, and that five new black faculty members have been employed for the current academic year. It's a goodsounding number, but, when one considers that the total number of black faculty members is less than 50 out of an estimated 1900 at UTK, the percentage still sits very low.

In addition, Dr. Dhyana Ziegler, president of UTK's Black Faculty and Staff Association and a professor of broadcasting, said, "They (who compiled the report) don't talk about how many black faculty left last year ... We have an attrition rate of losing four to five each year. So If (the university) brings in four to five, and (it) loses four to five, then there really are no gains."

The University is not making I

Schlesinger said, "Disappointment is the universal modern melody," and it is this tune of floundering hopes that blacks must be suffering to hear as they watch the reforms they gained in the 1960s lay stagnant by later political and administrative leaders.

UTK administrators, however, are breaking away from the norm somewhat by recently demonstrating some positive interest concerning students' and faculty's dissatisfaction with current race relations situations on campus.

Following reports last year of instances of racial tension and discrimination at UTK, Chancellor Jack Reese assembled a task force, comprised of faculty, students, University administrators, and members of the Knoxville community, to study race relations at UTK and to make recommendations for improvements ana changes in present policies.

Hopefully this was not just a symbolic gesture on the part of the administration. At least it brought needed attention to the issue, and according to the Chancellor's most recent progress report in response to the Task Force's recommendations, which was released October 7, some gC'od things seem to be

15

substantial gains in black enrollment, either. An estimated 175 black freshmen came .to UTK this year, bringing the total number of black students enrolled to around 1000; 路according to statistics from the Minority Student Affairs office, this is not a notable increase from previous years, so apparently recruitment efforts are not increasing either.

And are the black students who choose UTK deciding to stay? A study conducted by the Tennessee Higher Education Commission two years ago concluded that black students are as likely to graduate in five years from UTK as any other higher education institution in Tennessee. However, a majority of these students are majoring in some form of engineering, and, because UTK engineering programs are considered by many of those in the profession to be among the best in the country, the T.H.E.C. results may be skewed.

Problems concerning UTK's retention of black faculty and black students were discussed at a recent Spotlight forum held in UTK's University Center, which featured UTK faculty and administrators. One of the participants in the forum, Dr. Sheadrick Tillman, assistant vice-provost, said that the University sometimes seems unwilling to reach out to, or even meet halfway, the black faculty and students it claims to want to retain.

Vicki Williams, assistant professor in Social Work and another member of the panel, agreed with Tillman and said, "More sensitizing and more dialogue is needed among different groups," as well as a systematic way of educating people about differences that exist.

"Blacks are struggling with personal psychological problems," Williams said. "They feel they must do 16

more to be accepted, to prove themselves, but people do not let them."

Black students are overcoming the barriers they have found laid out for them at UTK, however. One example is John Claybrooks, a junior majoring in marketing, who is currently the vicepresident of the Student Government Association.

Claybrooks said in a interview, "Racial equality is really a matter of perception - whether a person perceives himself as an individual or allows himself to be put in a group." He said that he hopes the fact he was elected to his SGA position is sending out a message to other UTK students that it really doesn't matter whether they are black or white, as long as they believe in themselves as individuals.

Are there enough people who believe in themselves at UTK to challenge the present system and to be an example for those who are not so confident of who they are and what they deserve? A few seem to care enough to make the efforts and to make them noticeable enough that others may get excited and encouraged by their examples.

As King said, the time for apathy in the promotion of better race relations is over. Noone should decide that he or she can't help make a change, because ultimately that would be admitting that the the UTK community, that the world, can never have a chance of achieving racial equality. I think that a student at the Spotlight forum summed up eloquently the necessary rationale for the future when he determined, "The degradation of the world should be the binding point for all people," because civil rights are ultimately human rights . ..;1

拢aura Jltkinson

17

UNTITLED 18

JuJith COMon

Section 12-A

Patti Whitaker

19

20

UNTITLED

Jay Eintecume

The Song We Sang The song we sang in children's church went something like this hunger for information machines humming all day all night dial now salvation at your fingertips toll free numbers famished eyes transmit receive process cash that has to flow miles and miles of wires pulsating for the right people all day all night watching over me my lord VaviJ Michael Harris

21

UNTITLED

Clong Si

23

24

UNTITLED

£ee :Rnberts King

UNTITLED

JuJith CortOon 25

A Barbershop, The candy-cane pole outside The snip-snip of scissors inside Mixing with the whirl of two hair dryers and the occasional sound of Frap!

Spouting from a shaving cream can.

Full house on a Saturday afternoon, A stone pillar sits Old and frump-faced Plotting a devious plan To hide his bald spot.

Jlnthony 1?eagan