Phoenix - Fall 1997

UT KNOXVILLE LIBRARY

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Conte Art: "Revival" - Roberta Frew "Big Mom's Lotion" - Kristi Durham "Falling Apart" - Dawn Kunkel "Pychedelia No. 15 and No. 23"- David Crumpton "Winter" - Melissa Dawn Patterson "Femina" - Julia Graves "Passions Past" - Andre Trivette "Mole Trap" - Jason Englehardt "Untitled" - Shasta McCoy "Patriarch Dreams" - Torre Redford Poetry "I Am Upon Seeing the Bessie Harvey Collection in Knoxville , Tn." - Joseph Francis McGowen "A Construction Worker" - Mary Ann Russell "elevator music and Pachyderms" - Sarah Jennings "Wax" - Mark Cherry "Between Use" - Mary Ann Russell "I Wanna be Charles Kurault" - Whitney Matheson "The Distraught Noggin HUb-blub" - Merideth Ashton Hill . "As Children Often Play" - Bryce Kendall Withrow Fiction "Tracks Leading Somewhere" - Sam A. Mustafo "The Stone" - Mark Cherry

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"Revival" Photo Lithog raph Roberta Frew

1\

"Big Mom's Lotion" Kristi Durham

A ~~I~

silhouetted sharp in shadow

by July

(1 for li~hts to change the workers and machinery

noon sun where 16th street goes under

black silhouettes dark on blinding backdrop

the interstate A glint of chain handed

of heat He raises his clear plastic

to another both in ball caps Jeans grease-

water bottle lets the water run into

stiff a few in T-shirts He is shirtless

his mouth and down his chin his chest

sweat on torso glist~ns \heavy \ :-,.

I I' II " ~(

his buckled belt hands it to another

Construction _____

_ _ _

Worker

concre~e!

\.l

'I

')

/

I

ll~

bealTIS above hold the ninety-nine degree

who raises it and drinks and drinks

humid rumbling darkness Cars

his throat bobbing backlit elbow

move above below in double lines they wait

framing a triangle of light.

-Mary Anne Russell

Tracks

one else's. He flicks it back at me and moves to the next seat.

It is a ridiculously serpentine trip from Knin to Sarajevo.

The old railroad through Bihac was smashed up in the war,

Leading Somew

and they never rebuilt it. That left me with two options. The first was a single, but lengthy rail journey north through Zagreb and then down again into Bosnia. Zagreb, just as in those wistful days of the 1940's, now has a stiff-booted policeman for every four or five citizens. The Croats are never happier than when they are on patrol: checking, inspecting, halting, confiscating. So I avoided their dreary capital city. Instead I took this twisting combination of routes: by train to the coast road, by bus along the beautiful mountain shore of Dalmatia to Ploce, by rail again north along the steep west bank of the Neretva. We passed the rubble of Turkish bridges and the shell-shocked dust of Scanderbeg's fortresses and castles, their ancient stones dribbling down the mountain

I am going to visit my mother, and consequently, my

shoulders. This whole countryside - preserved, and then at

name is changing yet again. This is the fourth name I have

the close of the millennium, expired in an instant like

had in the twenty years of my life, although it is the first time

Cinderella's pumpkin carriage.

that the change has been of my own doing. I am putting it to the test now as the train stops in Mostar.

Above and behind the flat top of the border guard's hat, I

When the last ugly century ended, I was not quite seven years old, but already I had survived my native country. In those days, I was finishing up my tenure at the orphanage,

can see the long white sign through the window. It reads in

unashamed of the eleemosynary name (my second) given to

the scripts of six languages: REPUBLIC OF SERBIA.

me by the Italian priest. I was "Pietro" at that time, one of a

"Passport," he says. I have had it ready since he started

host of boys, all named quite appropriately after the disciples

working his way down the aisle. I hand over the little brown

and others who had suffered with Christ. We must have been

folder. He glances at it for what I try hard to remind myself

a strange little mob of fractured souls: crying at the sounds of

are only the same three seconds he spends looking at every-

airplanes, sleeping under our beds, dropping suddenly into

roly-poly bug balls and covering our ears whenever something

spiratorially at the bartender, and two more bottles appeared.

popped or made a loud, sudden noise. We clung to foreigners:

"I am finding people now in Bosnia for thirteen years."

He said the magic word. The forbidden name of our for-

foreigners, who always seemed to have food or raggedy toys.

They wore medical

gotten country. Inevitably, toward the end of the third bottle, 1

white or U.N. blue, and gave us lollipops and pricked our arms

asked the price. No doubt he had long since ceased to smile

with needles. They were towering, broad American soldiers in

when people shuddered at his answer.

They were tall, clean, full-fed people.

camouflage; dark chocolate faces and big brown hands stopping traffic and letting us cross the street to the school. As a

'~iml~il~l~?~lf~:i~m!tl~~~"iI~n

~

dollars," said, raising indexhefinger.

"N 0 One third

child, I sometimes though t of them as cold angels. They

now, which I

usually kept us alive, and became slightly angry whenev-

Two

er a few of us were killed despite their efforts.

Perhaps that is why I first listened to the German,

thirds when

last year, in the cafe. All my life I had turned toward

return

a foreign voice, grasping at those accents as if they

with

were life-rafts in the sea. And there he was, the cold-

informa-

est angel, in baggy blue jeans and a brown windbreaker.

"It is my specialty," he said mid-way through the sec-

~~~~~t~~~~~;~~~~~~~~:~~:~~~~~~~~lr~l~r

the

"I'll think

ond beer he had bought me. "I am doing this for thirty years have to go to work in half

now. First I was finding the people in the East zone when the an hour."

wall is come down-find them for their families, you see?

Brother and sister who are not seeing one another for forty years: I find them."

"I don't even know what she looks like," 1 said.

"It is no difference."

"I don't know her name."

"Names can be found."

"I don't even know if she's ... " "It is my specialty. Noch mal ein Bier," he nodded con-

"You go to work now?"

H~

asked, squinting at his watch.

"It's almost midnight."

"I work at the radio station," I said. "Late night."

"Ah, yes. Well, you think about it. I'll come find you next week, and you'll tell me yes."

One morning he stood waiting outside the back door to the studio as 1 emerged blinking into the light.

He was leaning against the wall, the same jeans and wind-

er empires.

I go to her now-she who

"I used to work many times at night," he said into the exhale of his cigarette. "I like it. It's quiet.

Have you been

gave me my first name.

The name I do not know, the woman I do not remember: I go to learn

I am still amazed that it wasn't the

this fIrst secret. And if

last I ever saw of him, the evening

not to return to it, then at

~~t~~~~olil~'M I gave him the money. He count-

ed it and wrote out a little '.~i.• ".U l:' "Lit;1!,!~~ receipt for me, which ended

with the underlined injunction: BALANCE DUE UPON

least to give it the proper burial it could not have received two decades ago. I, Alen Hucik, bastard son of a destroyed people, am returning.

Mother, I am coming, though you do not know it. I am coming to take back my name.

RECEIPT OF POSITIVE IDENTIFICATION. "I like to have records," he

I am, or was, a "Bosnian Muslim." It is just as well that we are

said with a quick smile as he

in extinct, for the title never explained us to the world in any mean-

handed it to me.

ingful way, and how then could we have ever expected anyone to

At last we are moving again.

care about us? There is no Bosnia anymore, and we never were very

Northward into Serbia now, into

Muslim. We were to the Muslim world what an Indiana Sunday

what had once been Herzegovina-part

Schooler is to the Pope- as distant and removed a cousin as could be

of an independent country only just long

imagined. To the West, we were never more than the exposed nerve

enough for me to have had the bad fortune to be

of an annoying ulcer. When a lengthy and gmdgingly-applied regi-

born in it. Along the narrow river valley we wind

men of medications failed, we were at last excised as offending

our way toward Sarajevo: around the waists of moun-

flesh. The hole created by our removal ( and a very small hole it

tains and through villages and passes which, like me, have been named and re-named over the years by ever-smaller and ever-angri-

was) was pulled together and stitched up.

Serbia moved west, and we ceased to be.

Croatia moved east,

They call the first war "The Bosnian Civil War." That's what heard once on a French radio program: La guerre civile

Bosnienne. My very existence is proof of how little civility was involved.

The second war, the one that swept us away into

I go to her now 路 Trotsky's infamous "dustbin of history" ... they don 't really call it she who gave me anything. I heard an American my first name. announcer once refer to it as the The name I do not "second phase of the Bosnian conknow the woman I flict." As pitiless as that expresdo not remember: sion seems, perhaps it is correct. It sounds more like a disease that I go to learn this way: the progression along the fi rst secret. path of a tenninal condition.

tance of a foreigner that I have learned the name and life of my own mother.

Her name is Hurrem. It is an old name, from the language of the Imperial Turks: the beloved wife of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. My father has no name, nor wi II he ever. In the report given me by the German, he is accorded a single sentence. He is the Serbian soldier who raped her and cut her face and left her to die on the mountain road between Zakmur and Gorazde.

My mother was 23 years old when the Norwegian doctor

And what do they call what happened to my mother? The last decade of the old millennium was a bloody orgy whose excesses

station. By that point, he must

finally crept to the attention of the world outside our besieged

have long since been inured to

cauldron. A "court of justice" was set up in Holland one or two

the spectacle of mothers and

years after I was born. The cold angels stood with wringing

babies weeping together, and of

hands and bemoaned thefin de siecle madness in which our peo-

a woman refusing to hold her

ple vanished from the earth. There was a short truce, in order for

own infant. I nursed on Belgian

the a few Western leaders to get re-elected, and then the last

baby fonnula from a plastic nipple;

spasms began. By that point already, my mother and I had part-

my mother's breasts were refused me.

ed company, on less than friendly terms.

Hurrem disappeared three months later

What more humiliation could be visited upon us? Now I

into the desperate human riptide washing up

know. We, who clung desperately to the coat-tails of foreigners,

around the besieged town of Gorazde. Not once

begging for scraps, begging for our lives- we have remaining to

did I feel the embrace of her arms. It was as if I had

us this one final degradation. It is only through the hired assis-

been born not to a woman, but to the war itself: conceived

in pain and hate, and delivered to the ravenous, all consuming

especial loathing for the Croatian boys who regularly beat me up

slaughter. From the first days of my life, I was a child of death.

after school, or at the very least bombarded me with rocks on my walk home. Better that than being called "Turk" or "Mohammed" every day, which faded slowly into my teenage years.

I received my third name--the name I had until today--at the

In Knin after the reconstruction there were only two radio sta-

age of nine. The new century was just underway, and gray-head-

tions for a little city of 150,000. The first was government-

ed old Mr. and Mrs. Hucik each held one of my hands as we wait-

owned, and played the news broadcasts and assorted drivel, shut-

ed for our tum in the municipal courtroom. It was mid-July, stuffy

ting down after 9:00 PM every night. With the help of a kindly

and tepid. It never gets very hot in those mountains in the sum-

teacher who liked my voice (and for whom I regularly smuggled

mertime, although the air swells with moisture from the melted

hashish from from the gypsies outside town), I got a job as an

snow on the lower perimeter of the Dinaras, and it hangs there

intern for Channel Two, the privately-owned music station, when

thickly for a month or two.

I was seventeen. A year later I was hired full-time as the program

They knew as much about me as the orphanage knew, mean-

manager's assistant. I was still only nineteen when I got my own

ing that as far as the Huciks could tell, my life began in the arms

six hours of post-midnight air: the somnolescent 'graveyard shift'

of an elderly woman carrying me to a retreating U.N. truck.

with its relative freedom, lousy pay, and non-existent audience.

When the Spanish peacemakers tried to wave her off, she cursed

I played American jazz music all night. Every disc the station

them and literally threw me into the moving vehicle, like Baby

owned, and then every one I could find anywhere. North and

Moses drifting downstream on the Nile. The soldiers passed me

south along the river valley I sent flying the rusty words of unre-

from post to post for a week before I landed at the Catholic

quited love, and the plaintive tag-a-Iong of Stanley's saxophone,

orphanage in Dubrovnik where I spent the balance of my next

Chet's trumpet, or Thelonius' thin dark fingers landing upon the

eight years.

keyboard. I released them each night to wander the mountain

My adoptive parents named me Alen, probably because the

passes and caress the thick clouds coming down off the ridges of

Huciks had never had a son of there own, and they didn't want to

Mount Sator, Mount Troglar, and all the other cold, gray places

spoil this windfall by raising a boy with the improbable name of

standing sentry-like in the east.

"Pietro." Good Catholics, good Croats, raising an orphan Muslim

Sometimes I lit a cigarette and blew the smoke into the micro-

boy: they chose a name which straddled both cultures, and thus

phone as I spoke, imagining my voice leaving the antenna atop

unwittingly made me a symbol of the very contradiction which

the station roof. Climbing up the steel pole and flying away from

had torn apart a fledgling nation and created the destruction in

its promontory- I could see it slam into the face of Mount Viliki,

which my life was conceived.

but instead of being destroyed, the voice would bounce and echo,

Chi Idren who grow up surrounded by peace and love learn to fear bullies--the children who grow up without either. I had no

laughing out over the valleys as it rose higher, ever higher, finally into space where all the voices must ultimately go. Leaving

forever, leaving the em1h and heading out, thinner and weaker yet

some of us in. I think maybe as many as half a million. There

always moving away.

are Bosnian dishwashers now at blues clubs in Miinchen and

I thought of my voice, of all the voices, when I was alone in

Stuttgart, Bosnian garbage collectors in Augsburg. Our people

the studio, the lights shut off so I could feel some of the night

became like the Kurds, Annenians, and Palestinians: trapped or

from which I was separated by soundproofed walls. I thought of

imprisoned within sight of our old homes- aching away the

the tall and pale young Swedish woman from the Red Cross,

decades until they pass into centuries, pining for the memory of

who visited our orphanage once. She eamestly spent hours with

a thing which has slipped from us forever.

each of us, taking our pictures and helping us write silly little

The rest of us are either dead or scattered to the

generic letters to 'family.' Mothers, fathers, uncles and aunts,

provinces of our conquerors. We keep to ourselves: I know

grandparents-any familial title which a given boy couldn't defi-

there are probably two or three hundred of us in Knin, but we all

nitely assure her was dead:

pretend to be Croats. We use their names and ape their dialect

"You're sure, Nader, that all your uncles are dead?"

and cross ourselves in their gaudy churches. I am no exception:

"Yes."

we all walk the tightrope. The Croats are not known for their

"All your mother's brothers?"

broad, encompassing view of humanity. Back in the 1940's they

"Yes."

proudly grew their own domestic brand of Nazis, and set off to

"And your mother's sisters?"

the same grisly business of their Aryan mentors, behind the red

And when six-year-old Nader hesitated, she seized upon that

and white checkered bmmers which served as their swastikas.

thin reed of imported hope: "There now, see. So your aunt is still alive, yes? Very good, Nader. We're going to write a letter to your aunt... You and me together, okay?"

And so outward they went, our little letters, carried on her

Now the banners are back. They stripped away one half of old Abraham's family in the last century, and I sense that it won't be too long before they come for the remnant of the other half.

I have a few Croatian friends, like Rene, the typesetter at the newspaper. He is only three years older than I am, but he's

back in a nylon backpack. Our tiny voices,heading out across

doing well, making his way in the world. He has a good job that

the mountains. We never saw the woman again, nor did anyone

pays three times what I eam, and he just got engaged to Mira, a

ever receive a reply.

cute, freckle-faced redhead who adores him. I can trust Rene because he is completely happy. He has everything he wants.

"You're really going to go?" he whispered over the edge of

Two and a half million people don't all just vanish at once.

the bottle. I nodded in the affIrmative, and he exhaled heavily,

There are some Bosnians left, here and there. After the second

leaned back in the chair, looked around the bar, shook his head,

war, the Gennans, whose consciences are still smarting from

and leaned toward me again.

1945, and who cringe at any synonym for "genocide," took

"How do you know this Gennan didn'L.l mean, do you

believe all of this?"

"What else do I have to believe?"

"What iLl mean ... Good God AIen, you're really going to go?"

"Will you help me?"

tive abode. "I'm selling half this stuff, all of it, I don't know. Just in case, you know?"

"Yeah."

'Well," I sighed and slapped his shoulder. "My love to Mira, all right?"

"Help you?"

"I haven't told her."

"I need something printed."

"Good. Don't."

When I answered my door two weeks later, he was pacing, his

"Good luck, Alen."

hands thrust into his jacket, puffing steam into the cold air.

"Pero."

"It's done," he said, slipping inside my apartment.

"Let me see."

He flicked the passport onto my kitchen counter. I examined

Since I boarded this train in Ploce, the ride has been unex-

the granulated plastic binder and the red-and-white checkerboard

pectedly smooth. The tracks must be brand-new. I dare say it mocks

shield of Croatia. Then I opened the fold to see my picture, and my

my taut nerves by feeling almost comfortable. Everywhere I see new

new name.

construction. In the towns and villages of the Neretva valley, scaf-

"Pero Gavrilovic?"

"It's very Serbian," he said tightly, still pacing within the

folding clings spider-like to fresh concrete and steel. Between the chunky blocks of the new apartment buildings stand sad little hous-

confmes of my living room.

es, churches, and stores, all wounded by shellfue and each still wait-

"It's very Serbian," he said tightly, still pacing within the confines of

ing for its turn at the wrecking ball.

my living room.

"Pero?"

"They're all named Pero. You wanted it to sound Serbian, well ... there it is."

'Well. Thank you, Rene."

He finally paused, fixed me with his stare for a moment, then shook his head.

"You shouldn't have sold your car. This ... didn't cost quite as much as you gave me."

"Just keep the money," I shrugged, looking around my diminu-

There is always the possibility that this is my last jour-

something, something, so

ney. If so , I am going in deceptive repose, so very different from the old-century image I keep forcing down of cat-

then the questions begin,

tle-cars loaded with ragged Jews headed north out of Croatia toward the steaming death-factories in Germany and Poland. I am keenly aware of the cruel irony of how easy it has been to enter Serbian Bosnia. Over the last two decades

again, the war that won't And then the questions

it was a very different thing for our people to leave: in suf-

was Alen doing trying to ent

focating buses choking on fumes , running out of gas or bog-

known him?

ging down in mountain mud slides .. .filthy children being

No , I could not risk the H

carried by smelly male arms, trudging up mountain trails ,

could not risk their white-he

little bodies yanked upward and away suddenly in the

and his pretty bride. So I a

shrieking of women when someone had stepped on a land

ing to the shadow of my

mIne.

my name .

There is no love lost between Serb and Croat. As soon

where the echoes of the c

as they ran out of Muslims to kill , they settled down to the

thousands of others like me

twitchy scrutiny of their endless cold war. Barbed wire and mines sprawl over the mountains between them . The cross-

down and build anew, and e

ing station in Mostar is the only place where it is feasible to

a wall , another echo , ano

penetrate this miniature iron curtain in a single hour. But

Soon they will have taken a

even so , there is always the chance ... Always the possibility

ings and walls, all the voice

that a Croatian name will rub some border guard the wrong

and rising, fading , dissipat"

way, and you will be taken aside . And then you will stand

the feet of God .

there , watching your baggage depart with the train, feeling

They don't

The sky is the same flat gray of all the new buildings,

know who I

and I find myself lost. I walk several blocks south from the

a

m

train station before 1 see them begin to change: the square

When

apartment buildings pocked with finger-sized holes and cov-

m u s

ered in linen-colored plaster patches where the larger

speak,

wounds were filled up.

solely to

Long ago they cleared away the worst cases. Buildings

answer

with faces so tom and mutilated that they looked from a dis-

direct

tance like rusted old radiator grilles, sitting in shimmering

they

pools of shattered glass. In twenty years, they have cleared

hear my accent but

away all the fallen trees, all the heaps of chewed-up bricks

they can't place it. They never

with bristly wires jutting like gnarled whiskers. Now, as I

quite finished their ethnic cleansing; there are Serbs left in

pick my way toward the river, I find only the most subtle of

Croatia and vice-versa, much to everyone's distaste.

reminders at the street level, like the scorched remains of

their questions,

"Purpose of your visit to Sarajevo?"

"I am visiting family."

"Duration of your stay?"

"One week."

The metal stamper descends on the page, and the woman frowns.

"You have never been to Serbia before," she says, flipping the paper to look at my photograph for the third time.

"No." "Why are you visiting only now?"

"I only just learned that my brother is living here. Our family was separated during the war."

half a park bench, sprouting weirdly from an open lot.

And the tracks. From beneath the new buildings, mostly buried under the new asphalt, the old train tracks emerge

here

and

there.

Sometimes they are almost completely

covered

and

their presence is very faint, like veins beneath the skin.

In sections of the city

he sky IS the ame flat gray f all the new uildings, and I ind myself lost.

which have been completely smashed and rebuilt, it was too much effort to tear up the old tracks, so they just added

She sighs and hands the little booklet back to me. Then

another layer of concrete and pavement and built over them.

she smiles, and it startles me so much that I instinctively grin

These phantom railroads appear now, at odd angles, some-

myself.

times stopping in the midst of intersections or resuming

"Welcome home, Mr. Gavrilovic."

again a few

I",

yards later. I pass older buildings now as I near my destination.

I imagine somehow that I could find that intersection where he

The old walls are checkered with splotches of plaster.

fell.

The

If I listened carefully, perhaps if I crawled along the

streets are not as well filled-in or paved. I remember a story I

ground or placed my ear against one of the flaking old walls,

read a few years ago in a glossy English magazine about a boy

the scream still trapped and bouncing from point to point would

who braved the snipers every day to cross a boulevard so that

reach me. And then I would say, "I hear you!" I could weep

he could see his sweetheart. He forbade her to make the treach-

and answer him at last: "I hear. , J remember, I won 't forget you.

erous journey, and he sprinted between the projectiles sent from

You are not lost because J have found you. "

the Serb trenches to take him down. One day, inevitably, he finally slipped on a loose stone and fell. In those seconds, tumbling, rolling to a stop in the middle of the street, exposed there as if naked, he lifted his eyes toward the hillside above the town

The ghetto begins with a yellow painted line across the

and he glared defiance at the one who split open his breast with

pavement- arbitrary like two feuding roommates who have

a bullet.

stupidly drawn a boundary to divide their apartment.

He died proud, with out knowing that two hours

No

before, a shell had struck the girl's apartment, tearing her apart

words, apparently, are necessary.

like confetti.

In the Muslim ghetto of Sarajevo, there are no new buildings.

The clearing was never undertaken here: chimneys rise absurdly from beside the street, torn off on top as if bitten and severed from whatever homes they once warmed. What had been a newspaper kiosk is now a blackened cylinder, putrid with human waste from its new function. I am approached, inspected perfunctorily, and then passed by two industrious mongrels sniffing their way across the street. It is not quite three o'clock in the afternoon.

The people examine me carefully as they pass.

Their glances rise and fall, ascending the length of my relatively new clothing, so incongruous to the shabby grays and browns they seem to hug more tightly while they wait for me to exit their field of vision. Women give me a wide berth, sometimes crossing the street instead of passing

Now, at long last, I am filled with fear.

How many times have I tried to imagine her face? In the stitched brows and tightened lips of the faces of Bosnian women in photographs .. '! have searched for her visage there, as if it would speak to me from the page, from the camera of the voyeuristic Western photographer. But the pages always remained flat and silent, and the multitudes of stricken women looked up and through me, their eyes seeming to follow the escaping flight of their screams.

Now, I sit at the top of the stairs, the corridor dark and stuffy, the walls caked with plaster to cover the damage of the bullets. The surfaces of this place look like petrified sponges, gray and crusty, and smell of urine and ashme.

Men squint, mouths hardening.

the Children

whisper and finger their lips or their buttons. I have found my own people at last, and they want nothing to do with me.

When I finally find a deserted corner, I pull the sports magazine from my breast pocket, look around, and then carefully unfold the German's map hidden inside. It is handwritten, yet he has measured and marked precise distances as if surveying for an engineering firm. I am four blocks from her apartment.

trays. I am sitting outside the door. I am waiting for her to come home from work. s

There is no noise from inside

the apartment. I listen- sit for a long time with my ear to the door. Nothing. I lack the courage to knock. The German told me where she worked, and now I wait for her, lying in ambush much in the manner that my father must have done nine before I was born.

Does she have a man now? She is not yet old; she may till be pretty. A husband, a lover? Some vagabond from our dying race- trapped here in this dying place as she is- into whose arms she falls at night to remind herself that there is still pleasure to be found in the world?

Or is she alone,

The light is fading outside, and the corridor with its one small and dirty window is turning from steel gray to charcoal.

Soon it will be black, and perhaps then she will arrive , unable at first to see my face , nor I hers . Maybe that is the only way.

1

From somewhere in the city I hear the rumbling of a train . The sound bounces and crashes, mixin with the other sounds, turning , twist" before it reaches me .

Maybe I simply

imagine it, or maybe it is a phantom train , heading out on one of the phantom tracks , slipping beneath the buildings, trying to escape elsewhere in the mutations of the battered old city.

The darkness is coming, and I must face the truth at last

I have no name. None, other than those given me by the charity of foreign strangers, and now a false label I have given myself.

I am a phantom, partially buried , an echo of

a faraway thing . I will have no name until she is here, until we are together, until we are whole-

~

j--I ~-

mother and

child . These miserable remnants of our people have no other chance.

Before the tear is halfway to the corner of my mouth , 1 hear the sound of footsteps , and then the scraping of the key.

elevator music and Pachyderms mUSIC; elevator WIne glasses:

and PachydermsClinking.

Beforethere was much of anythingan arm; Opened Up. Please avoid the Hypodermic N e e d 1 e swhile you walk along MY beach.

-Sarah Jennings

"Falling Apart" Dawn Kunkel

Wax Evening, As the Cold Curls the Moon Into a crescent, I see my skin s White battle Against the deep Night and I wish I was black. I Wish I was black So I couldn't tell Where my body Stopped and the Night began, so My smile could Be the Moon,

-Mark Cherry

"Psychedelia No. 15 and No. 23" David Crumpton

Four Seasons Series-"Winter" Melissa Dawn Patterson

"Femina" Julia Graves

Coooo - oooiinnnnggg Coooo - oooiinnnnggg [A little bit of bitchiness -] Cooo - iiinnngg Cooo - iiinnngg A little bit of itchiness!

BetYleen Us

UuhuuuUUUUhh! UuhuuuUUUUhh! (exasperated whine!)

Uhhhhhhh! (disgusted! dismissive!)

Why can't you ... (UH! !)?

(Higher pitch now) WHY AREN'T YOU ... (UUHH!)?

GAAAAHHHH! NEVER!!! ( ................. ) Waaa - haaa - haaaaa!

Higher pitch now WAAAA - HAAA - HHAAAAA! MMMAAAAHHHH-MMEEEEE! !

I'lTI ALLLL ALLLLOOOOONE! EEEEAAAAAAaaaaaaaa .....

COOOOOO-ing COOOOOOOOO - iiinnnnng AAWWWwwwww..... (pat pat) Now - - Begin Again: Mary Anne Russell

路The Stone Mark Cherry

"Pawpaw, look at this!"

Elliot stared at the stone nestled in his grandson's hands and was amazed and confounded.

Perfectly round, unusually flat, incredibly smooth.

"Boy, I think you've just found the perfect skipping rock."

Elliot had been skipping stones with his grandson for about a half-hour now without much luck. A couple four-skips and one five-skipper, but nothing even close to spectacular. Combing through the selection on the lake shore, Elliot had found a stone that seemed prolnising, but it shrank in the glory of his grandson's find.

"Pawpaw, could you throw it for me?"

"Naw, boy. You found it, you throw it."

"But it's such a good rock, I'll only mess it up."

"Nonsense. With that rock, even a girl could get twenty skips."

"But you could get a hunnerd, lnebbe two."

Elliot pictured himself giving the great rock a just-right hurl that propelled it clear across the lake.

"I just might try that, boy."

The boy handed him the stone, handling it like a match stick sculpture. "Boy, I never in all lny years seen a rock as pretty as this one. " "How long is that, pawpaw?"

"Well, I was born 'fore they

started keeping records, so I'm not exactly sure of the year, but I was drafted into the war when I was eighteen."

"You mean the Nazi war?"

"Naw, 'twas the Revolutionary war. Let's see, that started 'round 1775, so I guess I was born 'bout 1755 or so, best I can recollect. Served under General George Washington."

"George Washington?"

"Yep. Tall man, 'bout eight foot three."

"Whoa. Who was y'all fighting' ginst?"

"Oh, the British Redcoats, which made it 'specially tough, 'cause they wore red coats and we wore blue, and in Black & White, those two look nearly the same."

"Black & White?"

"Yep. This was well before color was invented, so everything was in Black & White, and if you look at the old Black & White teevee we keep up in the attic, you'll see it's pretty tough to tell the difference 'tween red and blue in Black & White."

"Is that why all the old movies and teevee shows are Black & White?"

"You're such a smart boy.

Yep. Color was invented 'round 1960 by one James Fabre, which is French for 'color.' Everyone born before 1960 had to go get color shots, but they sometimes wore off, which is why me and Grandlna

Andre Trivette

have white hair and skin, and why Old Man Jacobs up the road is so black."

"I never thought of that." "'Course not, you're just a Now, let's look at that rock." held it up in the air and it sOlneho ught the midday sun. He looked ou the lake, ahnost fully still exc a flock of geese bathing over to The air was still; the birds insects had stopped chirping. all waited for the skipping of great rock.

"That thing'll go for mil pawpaw."

"Miles, boy. If we don't fifty skips outta this, 1'11 give up skipping."

"1' 11 give up sodee pop!"

"Here we go!"

Elliot reached his arm and threw. Not a skipping throw a pitching throw. The rock the lake with a plop. He look over to the boy and said "ha,' so lnuch as a laugh, but ju A couple lnom with silence, and then insects started agaIn. , boy, if that rock a hunnerd skips, disappointed, and had it indeed gone for a hunnerd skips, 1'd a sat down and died right there on the spot. That rock was too good fer it's own good."

"Just shy of perfection."

"Ain't we all, boy."

J.U..UlUv'UIr

IWann Kuraul

be Charles

Hitch me to the back of a rustic pickup truck or careening Winnebago and watch me write the road.

I wanna be Charlie in Kerouac's shoes, recording common lllagic, roving eyes on backroads.

I'll note each bump and curve,

swerve to catch roadside spurts of wildflowers and leillonade stands.

Free fr01ll cinderblocks I'll meet extraordinary folks,

s01lle tipping Sunday hats others hoping for the bread truck.

The weather my overcoat, the road my tennis shoes,

I'll reinvent the wheel,

"Mole Trap"

like Charles Kuralt.

Jason Englehardt Whitney Matheson

"Untitled"

( The Distraught Noggin Hub-blu Meredith Ashton Hill

Let's jet, me and you, Now that the electromagnetic radiation has occluded the heavens Similar to an inebriated college intellectual Sinking into her home floor in the morning; Let's jet, through the dirty night streets from the library, The comer desk on the sixth floor Emerging from tingly blackness in strangers' rooms on campus Opaque restaurants playing the top hits and giving free refills: Elevators that come with a touch But don't always comply to requests With their sly thoughts The inquiry that is abiding in your mail box ...

Don't open the envelope, "Whatever is the thing?"

Let's jet and hang out.

Thither in the lobby chics and cats enter and exit Shooting the bull.

The natural violence of the gray variegates Clog the sky and block the body we orbit from reaching into my room,

It's thickness scares away The millions of heated anns Of our true, round, yellow, endearing mother, The confidence of our eyes decreases Lacking the touch of the sphere, All because of gray, The clouds, Mad and moving like an upset stomach, The barricade between me and her, They make the urge for her anns increase, My longing forcefully presses me down, But the feckless indigestion continues And therefore the irresoluteness.

No worries. There is plenty of chronological space, For the colorless stomach ache of the sky; The clock is not a worry, the clock is not a worry, As you prepare your image to confront the images you encounter, The clock will stand by while you rend, rip, rive, Generate, spawn and hatch, And the clock waits for you To make many adjustments on yourself and the things that call your attention, All these aspects make you tum the code of your postal communication, A frozen clock for me and a pausing timekeeper for you, F or thinking, thinking, Wondering, wondering, Sitting, sitting, After we have gone with full stomachs to get ice cream.

Thither in the lobby chics and cats enter and exit Shooting the bull.

No worries. There is plenty of chronological space, To ponder, "Should I step out of my comfort zone?"

And, "Should I open my stomach to the butterflies?"

The clock can be set at any time you desire And stepping off the ladder, Accompanied by my inadequate breasts and my more than adequate gut-

(public Comment: "She's got a microscopic bust!")

My taintless white blouse, my crisp, soft collar, My plain clean face accented with A diminutive touch of cosmetic costume(Public Comment: "Oh how she lacks proportion!")

Should I step out of my comfort zone, Scream like a wild animal and shake the perdurable stars?

F eel the flash, the clock waits For thinking, concluding and scratching out.

Each of those has flown through my psyche, Each and everyone:They came during class, while I lay in bed late at night, Or when I was running with the ball towards the goal at hockey practice, I've demarcated my existence With my mother' plastic, yellow, 1970's measuring cup, I've seen them busy and catching up with each other, I've witnessed their interests die, As I approach the filled couches With my body full of cocoons.

What and How do I deliver?

And those optical parts have burned me before, each and everyoneTheir crimson lasers burned through me with little difficulty, I'm burnt like a log, Standing newly composed of ashes, I can't move or I'll fall to the ground in a trillion particles of dust I'm dust.

So how am I supposed to confront?

What and How do I deliver?

And I've known the decorated torsos,

a11In Abercrombie sweaters and plaid shirts (With a touch, most are resisting and strong!)

Is it the distinctive, sometimes pleasant male smell, That incubates the cocoons?

Torsos that straighten and show plide regardless.

What and How do I deliver?

Which way to open my dry orifice?

Should I explain, what I've seen Out there underneath the sky's stomach ache, the empty eyes, the homesick eyes, the eyes that want those billions of photonic anns? ..

I meant to be a dust mite, hiding in the delicious yam of my favorite scarf.

The quiet of the morning, the quiet!

Evened by tired society and cool winds, Blankets you and me more Than my great-grandmother's quilt, After that Eskimo pie, Should I Face it all, Every atom, All? Even though I've thought deeper than a million chronological leagues, Even though I've been a butterfly fann for years, Even though I've felt it, Shown my inadequate bust to the beach, the track and the Appalachian Trail, And all who occupy them, I'm not popular, beautiful or special-but that's hunky-dorrey; I've had my ten minutes, And I know what kismet awaits us all, And to be blunt, It leaves me aghast.

And if it should have been done, through all that, Behind the waffle cones, the double scoops, the sprinkles, Midst the freezers, mid the subject of me and you.

If it should have been done, To hide the conflict with cocked cheekbones To have labored all materials of existence Into one of my grandmother's jam jars, And to take it on a dolly towards the harrowing mailbox, Stating: I'm a veteran of clinics who did not conquer, Here to speak to you, Forewarn you Each and every person, If then, a single torso crosses its firths,

Speak: "I was babbling before, gibbering, chattering, jabbering."

And if it should have been done, through all that, If it should have been done, Astern the clarion nights and the h31IDnock and the blush of the horizon, Astern the brouhaha of the compact discs, the waffle cones, the cologneAstern Ie tout ensemble?I am me. What? WHAT? Havoc of my mind and mouth is stable.

What if my hand and the charcoal admitted it in Art Class: If it should have been done If a single torso crosses its firths, or breathes dully, With an impartial glance over the mountain speak: "I was breathing before, gibbering, chattering, jabbering."

step out of my comfort zone And retend to love the tank I ride in?

I I wear nil and naught d march along the itemized and pacific trail. ve seen the stomach ache of the sky clear in

I've noted the clearing firmament, The unmarried, plain blue, That creates every color and forges all characters, irnicking the witty gray matter d swallowing us whole.

Meredith Ashton Hill

Torre Redford

A tiny hand plunges into the darkness, the boy grabs for the flashing lights as the hot air presses on his upper lip.

Excitedly he runs to the wooden porch, the bluish green mason jar held tightly in ginger fists.

"Mama! Mama! Look see I got one!"

"See?" Waiting for no sign of a response he dashes back into the cool security of the yard. The WOlnan moves restlessly In her steel chair that protests to her weight.

"Take the lid off honey!" paUSIng. "Or they' but the child is too far away to

As Children Often Play

energy to chase him.

The gentle breeze wraps around the frount of the house and she wonders, as her eyes press into the SUffilner night how long it will be before someone takes off her lid.

-Bryce Kendall Withrow

Editor Jason Aldred Managing Editor Lisa Kammerud Graphic Designer Katie Daniel Assistant Graphic Designer Joshua Sage Newman Art Editor Sara Lansdown Fiction Editor Puneet Sharma Non-Fiction Editor Josh Hagan Poetry Editor Whitney Matheson

Supporting Staff Kai Nguyen Suzanne Stanford Neal Maynord Andy Ashby Julia Graves Katie Ryba Kim Bryant Lori Funderburg Courtney Watson Holly Honnicut Kerri Bartlett Heath Blockley Cara Polinski Evie Rawlings Rebecca Husband Mark Cherry Fred Grim Dorian Deluca Kristi Kulesz Faculty Advisors Jane Pope Eric Smith

throughou t the academic year. Send submissions to Phoenix , room 5 Commun ications Building, 1345 Circ le ParkDrive, Knoxville, Tellllessee 37996-0314.