Phoenix - Spring 1997

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Phoenix literary / art magazine

Vol. 38 Iss. 3

Spring 1997

Subject: I

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Art

Non:...Fiction Photography

Poetry

Daniel Carpenter Jason Englehardt Roberta Frew Kim Goodson Jodi Hays Scott Keen Dawn Kunkel ,: Ashley Nason !

Lori Reed JoshuaAndrewSmith . . . . . . ....j GeorgJ Widner Tim Woods Miles Wolfe

"Untitled" "Understood" "Lucia" "Untitled" "Sandella's Rabbit" "Maquette with Ladybug" "Cages" "Untitled" "Creation Story" ··"Untitled" · "Bulgaria" "Untitled" "Untitled"

Erin Zammett

"The Canyon"

Bob Bayne Nolan D. Broadhurst, III Darunee Buripakdi Valerie Downes Tom Lewis

"Mullin's Milk Barn" "Bathed" ''Yosemite (1996)" "New Years Eve" "S&M Available?" -

Regina S. Baucom JiUDyb Steve Hall J2h~!.~~ Judy Loest John McConnell Spencer Reese Kevin Underdown Bryce Withrow

"Separation on Julian Street" , our Bad Moming; Maybe" : ...

"Classical Attic" ; "~P2@~~. !.~~P!.@!!2~:' . . .

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"Pastiche for a Romantic" "Postcandelic', "Songs of the Nineties" "TiIhely Suicide" "Lying Awake One Night Mter Finishing A Death in the Family A Second Time"

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© Copyright 1997 by the University of Tennessee. All rights are reserved by the individual contributors.

Phoenix is prepared camera-ready by student staff members and is published twice a year. Works of art, poetry, fiction and non-fiction are accepted throughout the academic year. Send submissions to Phoenix, room 5 Communications Building, 1345 Circle Park Drive Knoxville, Tennessee 37996-0314.

UT KNOXVILLE LIBRARY

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"Understood"

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"Cages"

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poetry Postcandelic John McConnell

The wet wax descends As the withering wick drowns And radiance ends.

Timely Suicide K.L. Underdown

The clock jumped off the wall The pieces flew afar Time was shattered in its tracks, The things that were now are.

Sporadic Inspirations John S. Irvin, II

Sporadic Inspirations not knowing where the next meal may come from because a beggar does not always eat when he begs and a writer does not always poeterize when he writes, so he doesn't.

Walking down the street people say "bum" under their breath, behind closed doors where they manifest sins, when they see my brother homeless sleeping on sidewalks of freedom.

But they don't understand that if he sleeps, the gnawing of hunger is not there and that if I dream, I write.

"Yosemite (1996)"

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nonfiction

Dust rose from the path as we began our descent. Dazzling rays of sunlight bounced off the rock walls that began to rise above us. The canyon spread before us, inviting with its depths of beauty and mystery. The view was overwhelming. I dared to look over the edge and my stomach dropped. The narrow trail wound steeply down the side of the canyon, leaving little room for an ascending team of donkeys and riders to pass. After a while, I turned and looked back toward the top of the canyon to check our progress. On the trail above, one of the donkeys lost its footing. My body stiffened as I empathized with the frightened passenger. I could feel the blood rushing through my veins to replenish my startled twelve-yearold heart. In awe and fear, I questioned the wisdom of my parents in putting me in this situation.

How could this wonder of the Western World be so beautiful, yet so terrifying? My respect for the beauty of the canyon was sincere, as was my fear. It was as if I were living in a painting framed by the horizon. The colors were vibrant, but they could not camouflage my fear. One wrong step and I would be breakfast for the teeth-like

naHle:

Erin Zammet

"The Canyon"

rocks that rose from below.

Deep purple clouds rolled in at eye-level, foreshadowing the storm that was inevitably en route.

Quickly, the first drops of rain escaped from the dark clouds.

We immediately began our ascent back to safety. The hike had taken us a mile and a half down the canyon, so we did not have much time to beat the storm.

The drops fell faster and we quickened our pace. The fear that began as awe and wonder took root inside me, growing more intense with every step.

With a forceful crack of thunder and a streak of lightening that imprinted itself inside my eyelids, the skies opened up. The heavy rain mixed with the donkey dung on the paths, forming green streams that flowed around the canyon like rapids. We sought shelter in a small cave positioned 1000 yards above the canyon floor. At this point, the fear that had been growing inside me surfaced, and the tears began to roll.

How such a beautiful element of nature could erupt into a ferocious beast was beyond my comprehension. I was scared. The rocks, loosened by the cracking thunder, crumbled over the ledge.

"The Canyon"

Watching the pieces of the canyon fall to their death, I shuddered, knowing it could be me.

The experience was literally breathtaking.

At that moment, I questioned my future existence; would this great mass of angry rock be my final destiny? I felt prisoner to the walls of the canyon and longed to be set free. I wondered what I had done to deserve this treatment; had the twelve years of my life been worth the torment?

These questions were living in my head, fertilized by my imagination. Tears clouded my vision and I pressed my hands firmly over my ears to suppress the thunder. I sat in the cave isolated from the world and pondered my predicament. The actual thoughts are unclear to me now, but the feelings can always be relived. I experienced fear that day, thirty minutes of pure fright. As I sat on the cold floor of the cave, I felt a transformation from a trusting child to a questioning adolescent.

The unconditional faith I had placed in my parents since birth was forever altered. Not to say that I lost my ability to trust, but I learned to look deeper than the surface. My experience in the canyon taught me to anticipate

nonfiction the potential danger that can lurk below a facade of beauty.

Occupied in my thoughts, I did not realize that the thunder was quieted and the lightening grown distant. Somewhere inside myself I heard a sigh of relief, as my fate was determined. I would survive. As the rain subsided, we made a break for the top of the canyon. I do not remember my feet touching the path as I hurried up the trail. Driven by fear, my legs moved mechanically toward the van. When we walked through the doors of our hotel I felt triumphant; I had overcome the canyon. While the adrenaline was still flowing, I grabbed my journal and documented the adventures. My hands shook as I relived the pivotal events. I now like to think that a brief period of maturation took place while I sat in the cave. It was the single most frightening experience in my life, yet it has become a beautiful, awesome, and unforgettable memory.

poetry Pastiche for a Romantic Judy Loest Dedicated to Dr. Edward W Bratton

They wait for you, those new-age sons And daughters descended from Homer and Hesiod, Their hearts and pens fueled with the karmic blood Of the poet tribe, their wide, hungry eyes as black With longing as the ancient seas that cradled them In the dark of unborn dreams. They have come For that voyage on the strange seas of thought, Bound for Albion, and they wait for you, Again, in youth's wild ecstasy.

They listen for your step, that limping gait Down empty halls-on you, a bouyant thing Of Byronic grace, a dip and spring, a glide and swingThat laugh as wild as Blake's might have been.

In other realms, they called you Shaman, Odin, Their gray-bearded Pan with glittering eye And arthritic knees. They have come again To listen to the silent urn, to hear the wind That drove the leaves of Autumn like ghosts And lifted the wings of the doomed albatross.

They strain at your riddles, those cryptic lines Scrawled on the board, some word, some clue They know will taste like opium dust or honeydew.

They yearn for a vision, one dream-blurred view Of Elysian fields above the banks of the Wye, Full of dancing poppies and a golden host Of daffodils. Into the nights and narrow margins Of blue-lined paper they puzzle the rhymes Of dead poets and struggle to compose An impossible theme, worthy of them and you.

Long after you are gone, are no more Than a turned-down page in a forgotten tome, These descendants of Pindar and Eurypides Will carry your riddles like stones, Dropping them onto the paths of dreamers, Who will stop to stare in wild surmise, silent,

At the suddenly illuminated lines Of an ancient text, hurling them out again Like prayers, through time.

And you will become that holy bird, That shy celandine and aged, knotty thorn, That old leech-gatherer from some far region sent To walk the despondent moors of humankind.

You, the force that moves the harp to chime, The midnight frost to work its secret ministry, And those spiry trees along the Hellespont To green and wither in perpetuity; you will be That shadow of a magnitude, the ghost Of all the ghost of the bards of Albion Who knocks relentlessly at the gate Of poets, through all eternity.

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"B ulgaria"

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"Creation Story"

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poetry Oassical Attic Steve Hall To not be accepted Into the realm of Forgiveness soft Misconceptions strange Varied beliefs That drive the Drunken monks mad Through the Blackened Hills forests unclothed Crying to God.

Songs of the Ninties Spencer Reese The Fetus whispered a poem by Blake and the innocence was lost in the experience.

Lying Awake One Night Mter Finishing A Death in the Family a Second Time Bryce Kendall Withrow The Tennessee Theater will never look the same. Each building that it touches has awakened in my eyes as the whispers of "my daddy's dead" haunting me.

I keep waiting ... as we both listen for the bang and crack of the broken car, struggling for the one more time that will never come, up the road and back into the drive. Until the I too will wait as I hold the hand of the little boy reassuring him that "soon, very soon" will not be forever.

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"Bathed"

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"S & M Available?"

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poetry

Your Bad Morning, Maybe Jill Dybka

on a morning like this, already the snooze has screamed 12 times outside its raining-usually meaningMother\Earth meeting Father j Sky and all that but today you woke to find your heart, your heart is a shriveled little salty thing, a squashed olive

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this morning this rain just means slow traffic wet socks

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you lay there you listen to the cars sizzle on the wet street and your honey your honey won't even let you put your cold feet on him

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Contributors Erin Zammett "The Canyon" Freshman in Communications

Ashley Nason "Untitled" Graduate Student in Printmaking

Jason Englehardt "Understood" Graduate Student in Printmaking

Kim Goodson "Untitled" Senior in Fine Arts (Watercolor )

Jodi Hays "Sandella's Rabbit" Junior in Fine Arts (Drawing)

Darunee Buripakdi ''Yosemite (1996)" Graduate Student in Medical Physiology

Miles Wolfe "Untitled" Junior Fine Arts (Drawing)

Kevin Underdown "Timely Suicide" Senior in English Literature

Jill Dybka 'Your Bad Morning, Maybe" Graduate Student in Information Science

Roberta Frew "Lucia" Senior in Fine Arts (Printmaking)

Dawn Kunkel "Cages" Graduate Student in Art Department

Nolan D. Broadhurst, III "Bathed" Senior in Graphic Design

George Widener "Bulgaria" Senior in Fine Arts

Lori Reed "Creation Story" Junior in Fine Arts

Scott Keen "Maquette with Ladybug" Graduate student in Fine Arts

Joshua Andrew Smith Bob Bayne "Untitled" "Mullin's Milk Barn" Senior in Psychology Junior in Studio Art

Valerie Downes "New Years Eve" Senior in Graphic Design

Tim Woods "Untitled" Senior in Fine Arts

Tom Lewis "S&M Adventure" Junior in Art History

Regina S. Baucom "Separation onJulian Street" Junior in Biology

Daniel Carpenter "Untitled" Junior in Fine Arts

John McConnell "Postcandelic" Freshman in Biology

John Irvin "Sporadic Inspiration" Freshman in English

Spencer Reese Bryce Withrow "Songs of the Nineties" "Lying Awake One Night Mter Junior in English Finishing A Death in the Family a Second Time" Judy Loest Junior in English "Pastiche for a Romantic" Graduate Student

Steve Hall "Classical Attic" Junior in English

Staff :

Thank You:

Editor Managing Editor Graphic Designer Assistant Designer Art Editor Non-Fiction Editor Fiction Editor Poetry Editor Supporting Staff Faculty Advisors

Ameet Doshi Lisa Kammerud Kristen Krempasky Katie Daniel Kathy Priore Jason Aldred Sam Quinn Tara Dalton Patrick Brantley, Sara Lansdown, Puneet Sharma Jane Pope and Eric Smith

The staff of the Phoenix would like to express their appreciation to Linda Graham, Karen Bayless, Betty Allen, Debbie Tappan, Jane Pope and Eric Smith for their patience and support.