Phoenix - Fall 1987

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J. LINTECUME "lIT YY ords, Words, Words, and More 'Words.

The reflection and the sound.

The faces produced, the images created, by visions of the mind. , ,

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Untitled

oil pastel and pencil, 3" x 2"

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Archetype of Spontaneity...

clay saltfired, 30" x 15" x 18"

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Monet's Cataracts "To put it bluntly, the fat old man who painted the great water-lily panels was very nearly blind at the time."

Alexander Elliot

"Springtime, Through the Branches" hangs crooked above my desk like the view from some skewed window, and now I am informed that each stroke and jot of color reflects--not the precision and forethought of brilliance-but faulty pale-washed vision, the thin milk film of his eyes filtering edges of light into a frothy mess of chromatic blurs, yet imagine having those eyes, seeing the dark tidal flow of the Thames as a blue trail swelling spring beyond the ruddy glow of mud-lined banks, feathered branches, and the quinacrine red roofs of shop keeps gleaming in the distance.

Chip J. Delffs

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Salisbury Cathedral, England

Elizabeth Helvey/photograph

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Trains

Openings

You told me about how your brother would come to your room at night, open the door a crack and let in an

For much of that summer I waited for the rain to end. Driving to work, headlights streaming through a sodden morning.

Somewhere in that building a cricket called out, a shrill keen, and every silence a space with no answers.

Hidden in the plants behind a clay pot or under a waxy leaf--

electric train he knew you were frightened of. You peered over the blankets while the train came toward you, lights flashing, little conductor bobbing crazily. It would hit the wall, you said, back up and hit it again. You were too scared to get up and turn it off, so you lay there listening to the mechanical grind and the slam, slam against the wall until you fell asleep. I laughed, thinking of my own sister's cruelty, but you just stared at me.

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my token of good luck.

I had mopped By ten o'clock the floors twice, cleaned the ladies' room and taken note of all changes in the weather.

Luck has nothing to do with it when you're--sixteen and a dime a dozen. that I began Tearing through with a door. slivers of chunks of plaster, slate driving under my nails.

It was there

Day after day until a space opened. A place where I was alone.

Right there behind the cloistering a cricket chirped. plants where

The laugh caught in my throat and I could see in your eyes a small light of your childhood still there, the

that it took In the days for it to die, mindless in its solitude, it never once felt the damp wind on its spindly cricket legs,

pain still grinding you down and me still slamming, slamming.

to turn and find a door, open and swinging on its hinges like wings.

Pamela Proffitt

Maria Jones

Two Men at the Fair

Christopher Gray/ photograph

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Untitled

Mindy Arnett/ steel, enamel, wood and broken glass, 19" x 19"

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Stone Falling Into the Water I am tired of being at the mercy of those who have no mercy, or, even worse, in thrall to those who do.

I have grown weary of my adversary, that evil twin; he has wasted me until it almost seems that I am the shadow and he the full-fleshed creature.

If I had halls -

gloomy palace corridors hung with black drapes I would stalk them, like Saul, too far gone for the ministrations of strings and sweet voices.

Chris Floyd

Jacob's Sorrow

Aaron Benson/clay, 10" x 10"

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Small Favors Do not be persuaded, no.

We indulge starling~. We are not so alone. Rains are plentiful.

Our children do handstands in the yard.

We have their pictures and laminated awards on the wall. We have the side view of ourselves in mirrors, not altogether awful. We establish histories with women and crave the symmetry as we often do cheesecake. We have the intelligent sight of dolphins on vacations. We have our wedding rings which tend to slip off after swimming. Our fingers shrink so, we hardly notice. We are several-skinned, shedding each and recolonizing in due season.

We possess the naming power of high priests and Pharisees. In ceremony underground we subdue our vacancies. Subdued, they acquire names, select voices.

Once named, they say: Small favors, these.

Let us tell what we have.

Lack: I brim over, poured into arenas.

I fragment and surge beneath private doorjams. I am a fisher of surprised men.

Isolation: I expand all worsening shadows.

I welcome the wee hours when recognized sweating in dreams I cli~b in my mother's open coffin. She asks were our suicides successful.

Fear: Waking fevered. I laugh loud and whistle. I drive far over the yellow line. I am country people knowing hard things before their time. I am their straw daughters made to drown kittens in barrels.

I am homesickness when my father does not, not, not corne back.

Sadness: I am passing. See how I pass with no foreseen trace. I deceive no one.

I am an obvious weight borne across shoulders.

I am an old man's slop jar. I am an undesirable girl-child orphaned to winter shock and precipice.

I overstep boundaries. I am notorious and shamed, my hair razor short. I languish with mediocre aid to fortify warring, sinking sands. I am crippled by knowledge. Nightly I pass unburned through bedroom walls.

Linda Parsons BUrggraf 14

Untitled

Lynn Murray/ intaglio, 9" x 4"

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Untitled

David Remo Melton/ stoneware, 16" high

Untitled

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Todd Lappin/photograph

Place de la Concorde, Paris

Elizabeth Helvey/ photograph

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Untitled

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Carol Farrar/aquarelle, 6" x 8"

Carol Farrar / aquarelle, 7.5" x 7.5"

Carol Farrar/ aquarelle, 6" x 6"

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