Phoenix Literary Magazine, Fall 2019

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fall 2019

issue sixty-two

volume one

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printed in knoxville, tennessee 3

Table of Contents

Art Cover

Esc Michael Santoro Windows

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William Rerick

Young Street Bridge - Aberdeen, Washington Gum Face

To Fold the Space Between Us Saint

Lauren Farka

Sarah Goldstein

Red Wall

7 10

Tatiana Tikhonova

Thoughts

6 8

Sarah Goldstein

Agony

4 5

William Rerick

Car Bouquet

Jody Lynn

Tatiana Tikhonova

12 13

Alexa White

Disruption

Marieli Valencia

15

Rorschach

Katherine Seal

16

A Past Behind Me

Abby Hamilton

Third Room on the Right Polozintho Parallelia

Hayden Aukerman Juniper Teffeteller

Can We Consume Post

Abby Hamilton

Rachel Doub

Haley Cowan

17 18 20 22 26 27

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Poetry

My Lover is No Adonis Andrew Davis

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no. 4

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Zoie Mull

no. 7 goodnight drive The Stone Table Sister

Zoie Mull

Charity Ray

Leaving Home

11 Bailee Wilson

15

Maya Rao

7 pm at the Royal Cancun

18 Bailee Wilson

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R.F. Greer

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Things will get worse before they get better.

To Love in Vain In Curia

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Charity Ray

(INCIDENTAL MUSIC):

Misfire

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Alexandria Vincent

Michael Bloodworth

Here as in Heaven In The End

Emilah Sankey

Emilah Sankey

Kenzie Ward

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Prose

Code Switching as Survival Amber Albritton 5

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My Lover is No Adonis (God is Definitely a gay man) Andrew Davis my lover lies languid in the bath,

every kiss we share is holy,

my legs snake around his

and each embrace is a baptism,

and, clinging to him, wrap and twist—

the way his body moves beneath

ivy on marble thighs.

mine is such a gorgeous dance that I am privileged and privy to

Michelangelo’s David has nothing

and each breath from our lips feels

on my lover—his beauty is too great

like a prayer

for the gallery in Florence or for the Louvre in Paris.

my lover is no Adonis, my lover is no David,

I gasp each time my lover undresses,

(his beauty outshines theirs easily)

the world’s finest treasure brings me

even Aphrodite herself is jealous of

to my knees every single time—-

my lover, and I do not blame her

he is breathtaking from every angle, but especially this one

no beauty in your lifetime will you see that

his beauty transcends art—

compares to that of

no artist but God himself

my lover, lying languid and lazy and

(oh, god is definitely a gay man)

lovely—with my legs wrapped around

knows how to

his—in the bath

sculpt such a pleasure

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Windows Oil on Canvas William Rerick

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Young Street Bridge - Aberdeen, Washington Oil on canvas Jody Lynn

T

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he kids are out the door. The Judds’ “Grandpa (Tell Me ‘Bout the Good Ole Days’)” plays in stereo, in your head. You think of breaking and stringing beans with Mamaw in the big silver bowl that held the salted popcorn your kids never got, for being gone, always moving, moving since their mom was a kid. Made to move. No malts for them. You watch them back out of the driveway. Wave. “Lit” means good, not high; maybe it’s as good as being high. “Spicy” means hot. “That’s my jam” and “on-fleek” are already archaic.

There are about 16 other new idioms you haven’t learned yet. They’re listening to “Teenagers” by My Chemical Romance, filtering out of the Civic in throbs they move to like zombies. Busting up the morning quiet. Did you do it? Did you say the right thing, and in their language?

Even when your skin is heavy, you have 30 minutes to shower, pull clean laundry out of the baskets lining the upstairs hall, iron it, so grouchy you can hardly breathe, in decaffeinated blurs, fix your eyes on their futures. A good breakfast to start. Omelets because you get to beat something, and don’t forget to pray for

Gum Face Oil on wood William Rerick

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Gabe is leaving first.

316 days and a wakeup, or thereabouts. This is going to hurt. It’s Gabriel’s senior year.

We’ll graduate together. He’s working on his application packet for the USAFA while you’re considering leaving the other two for graduate school away from home. It’s a long process and involves lots of asks from others. Courtesy. Responsibility.

To whom? To self, to the girls, to the house, to your darling? Remember to have Gabriel write Thank You notes to his referees. You write yours. Practice gratitude in action. I keep thinking I’ve forgotten to tell him 6

To Fold the Space Between Us Pastel, crayon on paper Lauren Farkas

Bourdain’s daughter. Because you get it. Pull yourself together and put on your Talbots slacks, too tight around the middle, Motivational Speaker, a cross between Chris Farley’s SNL “Down by the River” skit and Tony Robbins. Something between Oprah and Osteen, and Pink Floyd and Poison and Christ. Words are important.

Step into driving loafers that are just walkable enough to pay for parking up close. Say the thing that will last, that’ll get the kids home, that’ll steel them when they face the hard stuff. I love you. Stay away from the bad things. Ask questions.

Be kind. Walk in groups. They can’t hear you. They’re zombies, institutionalized to fit, long gone widgets. And maybe you’re not saying it the right way, even if they are listening.

something, Gabriel, so many things, but I can’t think of what they are. There’s always a lump in my throat I can’t name, when I look at him these days.

He must notice, because he’s gone to kissing the top of my head plenty and hugging me before he leaves the room. I’m not complaining. I just Cont’d on page 25

Car Bouquet Film Photography Sarah Goldstein

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Saint Film Photography

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Sarah Goldstein

no. 4 Zoie Mull if ever there was a time that i needed you to be a cloud or a bug it would be now that the mountains have slowed their pace to an unsteady crawl sprawled out leaving us in a valley to fend for ourselves on the couch in the living room uncircling itself, the cat removes its coat long enough for me to try it on. if it’s still here tomorrow, i might take it but for now, back on. it’s getting cold.

no. 7 goodnight drive Zoie Mull you found the light switch but couldn’t remember which one to flip. if you’re patient, the morning will be bright. but if you can’t fall asleep without the light on, we can drive to town and you can tilt the seat back.

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10 Agony Woodcut print Tatiana Tikhonova

Sister

The Stone Table

Charity Ray

Charity Ray I rake clouds across skies

they are made of asphalt like my teeth and cover the roads.

An alter atop a hill a lamb white waiting breath coils around its neck like night fog.

Sacrifice is easy if you don’t mind blood.

Your tiny hands hold mine tight, dandelion eyelashes sweep my cheek, dampen your Hello Kitty pillow.

Your voice is sandpaper from screams that pierced through my dreams.

Rain falls on our matching heads – You hear howls, branches creak, see a beast that doesn’t sleep –

I found a glass bottle in the river

cracked –

over the brim wine spills – I sip cut my lip.

Bones clatter across grass, stained like a cathedral mural.

Dirt under my nails, twigs in my hair I swallow spit – strangled bleats echo – Shivers chase the figures

into flame.

on my shoulders

It’s not real, you can breathe.

You stand in the dark on the edge of the woods – your puppy ran into the trees, but you see

only the memory, hear the crunch, the red eyes that follow you at night.

You swallow the heart in your mouth,

beating faster than mine.

Snowflakes fall like dandruff from the head of God.

Take a cold shower, turn on the lights.

I’ll braid your hair, keep a flashlight.

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Thoughts Wood engraving print Tatiana Tikhonova

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Red Wall Photography Alexa White

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(INCIDENTAL MUSIC): No. 27 Summer in Svalbard Bailee Wilson

Give a bear a violin

and she will work the bow,

create a melody to coax blue

Replace the bow in rib cage;

up into evening sky.

teeth to blubber,

She’ll call it midnight sun.

whale’s corpse, festering.

In the sun-swollen stomach: an arctic fox, summer-brown.

Rorschach Digital scans Katherine Seal

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Disruption Photography Marieli Valencia

Give a fox a cello

and he will swoon “Morning Mood”

in the hollows of Alkefjellet;

bend strings to guillemot feathers,

gull droppings, egg yolks.

Morgenstemning på Svalbard: bone-white blushing, whistle tones, pair of wolves eating musk ox in lusty flute breaths.

They’ll call it romance.

Bell-heather: herbal, stinking.

Smoke and flesh (Longyearbyen).

Bears with meat breath.

Smells in a swell,

song for permafrost.

Give a bear a violin and she’ll drink it up, lingonberry-honey winter wine, sweet as seal blood, until the bow cracks in her bird-beak claws.

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A Past Behind Me Photography Abby Hamilton

Third Room on the Right Photography Abby Hamilton

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Leaving Home

“Promise me you won’t be out past ten”

Maya Rao

If you are, have that nice boy x walk you to your car

“Promise me you won’t wear revealing clothes”

If you do, bring that long jacket your grandmother bought you

“Promise me you will cover up that gay sticker on your car”

If you don’t, remember to keep tape in your car just in case

“Promise me you won’t keep secrets from me”

If you do, at least tell your brother

“Promise me you won’t stay up too late”

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If you have trouble sleeping, call me

7 pm at the Royal Cancun Bailee Wilson Woman on the beach read my palm, saw un halcon with ochre feathers, dripping seashell pink to sand.

Said a sunset could kill me. Watch for talons.

so I fell asleep with the shower on.

I ordered a margarita, stepped on glass.

That’s why I smell: caramelo, fresh cocos, seaweed, or strawberry liquor spit up on a blue suitcase.

Two hours later: puked guts into a zona hotelera toilet bowl.

My friends said I could have una cerveza

Slept wet-dog in the tub.

if I waited ‘til breakfast;

Woke too early, humming,

ate eggs, toast like a good girl.

/ Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream /

I gobbled them down to nada.

then trickled to my twin bed.

Slept in Xtabentún. Bathed in honey shampoo.

From the buffet line, I could hear birds squawking,

Tried not to wake the neighbors.

beach woman staring, toe-tapping in time, waves crashing with the fury of buildings falling,

Are you okay?

I’m good.

Are you sure?

bird screaming like

Real good.

(the noises I make in my sleep).

Got too drunk singing / nah nah nah nahnahnahnah nahnahnahnah hey Jude /

Misfire R.F. Greer (Past)

(Present)

In the same breath

Then with a gentle arch

you said I tasted like an old fashioned

of your arms, you spin me away

you laughed my name

from your chest

asked me to dance

let go as I continue dancing alone 19

20 Polozintho Screenprint Hayden Aukerman

Things will get worse before they get better.

Kenzie Ward I call her my old friend.

The overwhelming, lingering, suffocating presence that never quite seems to fully leave.

An uninvited guest at my table,

Then, my sister was born.

who stays long past the meal’s end.

Someone so fragile and weak,

She’s quieter some nights,

but pure,

I can almost completely ignore her.

That made me see something different in life.

But in high school she was deafening.

Someone that made me want to stay.

I thought of dying.

I pray for a salvation like this I knew before,

I thought I would never make it this far.

something to latch onto.

I considered jumping from cars and windows.

But will it ever arrive?

I imagined a life that ended before it began.

I worry I wait for a hand,

My entire identity was encompassed by her.

to pull me out of the depths of myself,

Some days,

but the hand will never come.

it still is.

To Love in Vain Alexandria Vincent To love in vain is to soak up the sea, Sweep the shoreline, And to cling to a sunken boat.

Yet, we love in vain all the same.

Here I am, Loving you, With a heart soaked in salt And bitterness pumping into my veins.

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Parallelia Graphite, colored pencil on paper Juniper Teffeteller

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In Curia Michael Bloodworth I’ve seen folks overdose in a crowded room where their only escape was to retreat to and when whatever drug or blasphemy began to take its toll, I saw the better half of the room reserve judgement rather, falsified court documents made attorneys into atrocities.

And the court said no one is created a criminal, like being born poor systematic and inevitable and set up for failure somehow falls short.

I see the same isolation in the juror and the drug addict

Poverty is illegal in this country.

the single mom, the schizophrenic

I have bankruptcy written all over me.

all familiar with the same facts.

I have eviction carved into my brow like tattoo sleeve

And when I look down

like branding scar

from the high place I sometimes put myself

like birthmark.

I see their shoes. busted soles, failing glue,

And when I look around

and broken bootstraps.

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Here as in Heaven Emilah Sankey Our father in heaven,

Heavy in my chest, you on the bed

Hallowed be your name

Blood red, paper thin

Your kingdom come

You’re not here but you’re not there

Your will be done

Everything is blankblankblank

On earth as it is in heaven

Heaven sweet heaven bring us peace.

In The End Emilah Sankey In the end all that you are is reduced to policies— life, retirement, housing...

A being cut down for the government.

Numbers to add and dollars to compensate my loss.

You will always be more than a number to me.

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Code Switching cont’d wish I could remember the thing. What is it?

Everything. Sometimes, I glance across the room at him, trying to look without his noticing. He sits like he did when he was four, head all the way back, hands behind his head, ankles crossed.

When he was that age, I thought how funny it was he looked like a little man. He speaks so clearly. None of the lost R’s that tormented me in kindergarten with Mrs. Ray that sounded like Mrs. Way. Perfect articulation, that kid. And he’s scared to death now, about to launch. I can hear it in his words and how he takes long pauses when he speaks, trying to get it right.

Last year, before he could get his driver’s license, I dropped him off downtown.

He had to get home without calling a friend and I told him to stay off of the interstate. Nearly 16 miles. Just under three hours. He ran it himself, by his own will, with the good tools collected in discipline, one foot in front of the other. Picking them up and putting them down. Cross Country paid off. Teamwork pays off. It’s a good thing, anyway, knowing how to get home. Don’t think on it too long.

windows. Pour coffee. Would you like cinnamon or nutmeg? Yes, please.

I set my cup down, grab my new Etgar Keret. Man, that was a good talk. Totes entertaining. No. Fly? No. An entertaining and thought-provoking gift of a night. Yes. His parents were Polish immigrants to Israel.

ISRAEL. He knows war, looked down his barrel at someone looking back. His work has been translated into 42 languages, in 45 countries.

What is trying to do? What is he getting at? He is working out the universality of the human condition; in short fiction he is speaking language the masses get, and not only do we get it, we’re raving about his good, Kafka-esque, work.

Empathetic, kind, and even when the stakes are high, funny. I mean, there’s a goldfish, smoking a joint, and another one wearing houseslippers. Read a while. Forget time.

Otto barks, his startling language, and you put the book down.

A good breakfast to start.

Omelets because you get to beat something, and don’t forget to pray for Bourdain’s daughter.

Be happy. Be grateful. For the love, pull your shit together. He’s prepared. –– Breakup the blues with morning chores. Frank, on the box; a little Sinatra will have you flying to the moon, have you dancing in no time, there in the kitchen in Concord Hills. Smallest kitchen in the neighborhood. It’s a great kitchen. Otto’s been fed; best doggo in the world. Tomatoes and mint, watered. Lemon Balm, Ginkgo? Check. Sweep the back porch. Switch over the laundry. Endless laundry. Clean the dog-nosed smears off the

Flip to CBS This Morning, WVLT, Knoxville.

Wonder if Gayle’s hair will be in disheveled twists? Will she preach today? Wonder what her natural hair looks like Wonder if she let it go in the sixties. The sixties. Remember to email Chris Green about the Local Color Revival. Find and list correlatives between LCR, Bluegrass in Appalachia, and the African American diaspora through Jazz. Review creole contribution. Set up grad’app’ portals. Consider which area of study, poetry or creative non-fiction. Consider whether or not you’ve got the goods. Put insecurity away. Pray. Read your Bible. There are many holy Scriptures. This one is mine. Make a list of possible schools, in two columns, fully funded 25 and low res’. Total entrance fees. Mark dates.

Can We Consume Ceramic , acrylic Haley Cowan

Who’s on? Tom Hanks? Love that guy.

Has he been tagged as a pussy-grabber? God, I hope not. Weather. Cincy? Hot. Chi-town, hot.

LA, plenty hot. Knoxville? It’s twice-breathed air out there this morning. Brightside, think quickly.

Reset. It’s hot, but, it’s not Somalia hot. Pray for those guys. It’s not Baghdad hot. Pray again. It is just this side of hell hot. Just this side. I’m ready for fall. Pumpkin Spice? That’s not really what I’m saying. Who’s this guy? Tarell Alvin McCraney, David Makes Man. Code-Switching. Everybody does it. Who doesn’t? Only the truly authentic.

Horseshit. Code-Switching or Code-Mixing? Look it up. It’s is a hot topic these days. Trump daze.

Don’t dwell.

Code switching is everywhere, not only on casual morning news magazines, but in linguistics and social-science academia too.

26 My mind continues; I know I do it. Thirty-

four moves in forty years, the language of military town after military town, the language of privilege of Farragut, the language of poverty of empathy, poverty of grace, poverty of imagination beyond one’s experience, lack of perspective in many languages, gentleness offered in many others, and try to remember, don’t say fuck in front of Gram. Different sounds, styles, and culture at each place.

Often, it seems code-switching is considered forced duplicity of mind, so that one may fit in. Edited self. White-washed. Antidiverse. Look it up. There are multiple podcasts, magazine articles, journal reports, TED Talks, and various multi-media covering the topic lately.

Seems lately. Maybe you’re just now noticing it, these past few years or so.

Typically, it means aligning oneself, in language and behavior, as to be culturally

Post Performance, sculpture Rachel Doub

compatible. In To Kill A Mocking Bird, Scout calls a version of it “body English.” The point is: communication. Commune. Co. Exist with.

Myself in relation to others. Since inception, people have found ways to communicate more clearly, often leaving pieces of self edited or ignored. Instead of seeing it as divisive or despotic, consider that by adapting to one another, we are able to create larger community, larger sense of belonging. Think about it in

relation to self. Talk to the kids about this when they get home.

Dig in. We strive to learn the language and rhythms of a place.

For example, when you were a kid, you had to use proper English with Grandmother, not Mamaw, except for tornada and tomata and warsh and tabacca. With school friends, use proper English for tornado and tomato, wash and tobacco. Try to hide wide vowels by being quiet.

With neighborhood friends off Sutherland, slide into easy Ebonics at lunch and at the swing set, axing if their momma yanks they hair into tight plaits too, pacifically when you axed for a ponytail, and don’t pull so hard, and they showed me they bruise when I came to school with mine, and rubbed the hair on my arms; Tornika knew I was embarrassed and cheered me up with double-dutch and hopscotch and shared a bite of her apple and I gave her half my butter-only whitebread sandwich and axed can we hold hands on the way home by the railroad tracks and look we have matching barrettes we both call bobos.

Later, on Oahu, pidgin. In this case pidgin is a mix of Asian, Polynesian, and American English.

Use pidgin around the lunch yard at Moanalua, except around the kid from Baltimore who teaches you to drop the t when you say it, and use heavier da’kine pidgin when you’re surfing Barber’s Point, “yeah cuz, we got strong da kine lefts, brah.” Not your cousin,you’re your brother. Laugh with the locals when they, in their own inbred royalty, ask which of your cousins you’ve banged, in deep da-kine wounds, angering Pele with willful ignorance.

Speak pidgin with your sisters in front of and excluding your parents. Your real sisters. Be

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good at teenagering. Adjust and adapt.

For any military town, globally, learn the acronyms: PX, DiFAC, FUBAR, SNAFU, KIA, and USASOC. ODF, which is how you feel most of the time. Post Exchange. Dining Facility. Fucked up beyond all recognition. Situation normal, all fucked up. Killed in Action. United States Army Special Operations Command. Out der flappin’.

BRAC, over Pentagon way. Sounds like “Brack.”

Base realignment and closure committee. Learn the cadence of goodbye and the OpTempo of vulgarities. TDY. Temporary Duty Assignment.

Cussing is huge with the soldiers and you get good at it. I didn’t learn the words: twat, beaver, puta, snatch, pink taco, clam, manin-the-boat, clit, or vulva until I was an adult, and married.

Queenie will let you back in the track mom clutch, but not all the way back. You’re not allowed in book club yet, but that’s probably because you related too closely with Bret Ashley when it was your turn and you chose The Sun Also Rises. Fitting in is censorship. It’s about adaptability.

And when you go to Pell, Merlin is always a polite gentleman, Order of the Shabby-Genteel, but with you he lets his slithering loose, gossips, his hick bigotry and homophobic rants, and you wonder why he thinks you’re the one it’s okay to hate with. Excise. Move on.

At church, there’s the language of propitiation.

Enoughness. The good, born-again, Christian will speak truth into the sinner.

Pointing out that Jesus had brown skin and loved all the people, or that there are three Marys, it’s possible you will lose community.

Communication has failed. They patronize, on committee, with whether or not you have prayerfully considered what Jesus would do.

You’re definitely going to hell. Try to elevate your language. Discuss with them Systematic Theology, Calvin’s Institutes, Tozer, Chambers, Bonhoeffer, Graham. Discover they’ve read none of them. Shift down. The Gospels. Parabolic teachings. Children’s stories. Jesus’ letters in red. Love Him. Love others. For this sums up the Law and the prophets. Continue. If He is the propitiation for what has been done and what will be done, then what of hell? I’m with Assisi and Aquinas, but I lost my fellow congregants in the language, again. Move on to conversations with active learners, those who are learning on purpose.

Everything is going to be okay. Maybe even better than that. Endless assurance, relentless mothering. Not bad. Just. always. fucking. on.

Tidy your language for Farragut team moms. Turns out track moms don’t mind you cuss some, but you can’t cuss a lot and if you call the principal, who-has-none, a fucktard or a dick, or the cross country coach a cunt for having a few unnecessary heat casualties, they frown on that too. One meet, there were three ambulanceprovided intravenous hydrations. Atchley’s kid was taken to the hospital. 100% preventable injuries. These kids’ heat and cold casualty rates are increased now for the rest of their lives. For what? In all your years of watching your father and your husband with their brothers, the burden of witness, there were never, not one, not in any Suck, a single heat casualty. Men died dumb, and from fire like rain, but never from the temperature of weather.

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You can call the principal a slug-in-a-tie; the Farragutions are fine with that, and if you make up with Oz-The-Great-and-Powerful,

Go the University of Tennessee, be a Vol. Switch to the language of curiosity, break out those ACT vocab jewels. Consider words, discern how to explicate the soundboard of the poem, electric, the song of lyricism. All the senses. Blend edu-talk with colloquialism. Use colloquialism instead of slang. Work in learning objectives and pedogeological choice. “What’s the tea” means what’s new, what do you know about it, spill the beans. Get to the kindness behind the pretense. Get at one another with a generosity of spirit. Talk. Craft.

Code-switching here is nuanced. Build relationships. Who were gay in the 90’s are now queer, and the young’uns ask synchronized, over pool and smoke and bad bar food at Urban, how queer you are and you say pretty queer and swing the pool cue like a bat because baseball is still for boys, and because there was that time you fell in love with Jess and she loved you back and let you touch her soft breasts and taste her honeysuckle cunt that pulsed against your tongue, juiced peach. Abandon nuance, careful not to exact too much, one from another. Embrace gentleness.

Offer generosity. Approach gracefully. Be fucking kind. Code-switching can also be about personhood and normative(s) and new pronouns.

It’s about inclusivity.

Remember there was Erin, an Alabama fan, with whom you slid wide those vowels of your youth, who laid her head on your belly and wept with her fingers inside you, and licked her hands she was satisfied you were, and put away the harshness of heteronormativity. The knife of the T. The absolute cruelty of normal, the displacement of it. Each person and town, its own lexicon. Amy, from Boston, again lost R’s, whose short red pixie cut burned your thigh with cigarette ash, whose hip you bruised your cunt on, just before you came together. Eros. On ethics, on emotion, on logic, the ethos, pathos, and logos of code-switching.

And when you go home there’s the language of answer, the language of mother.

Here’s how you print your insurance cards; the forms for cross country and signed syllabi are ready on the fridge clip, and be sure it’s on the white board, and keep your schedules organized, and call me when you get there, and yes I have your college board login, and your ortho is paid, and wear your retainer to bed, and here’s my debit card for gas, and honey, I’m sure. Everything is going to be okay. Maybe even better than that.

Endless assurance, relentless mothering. Not bad. Just. always. fucking. on. Hastag no breaks.

The lexicon of wife and husband become the cheer squad. Parents. Partners. Squad goals?

No. Relationship goals. Better. There’s bedroom talk and business talk and, when the chicks aren’t being tended, we’re friends. We talk like people do when they’ve finally known one another longer than they haven’t. The familiarity of longtime lovers. When you notice a heaviness in his gate, the rounding of his shoulders, a downturn, barely, of the right corner of his mouth, the lip he busted in Austria, those scarred lips, sacred, that held hand-rolled(s) in Lima, and any encouragement you’ve ever received. What’s wrong? You can ask or not, either way, you’re both understood. And he’s got your number too, the whispers in your head of doubt, the spider legs of insecurity, fog of inadequacy, the guilt, the lost authenticity, the self of switching, when your jaw tightens, and your back straightens. You become one another’s steeled vault, a tightly keyed lexicon of truth, kindness, guardianship, and protection. Code-switching to fit, you hold one another’s stories. You know, by now, a thousand languages of people and place. Little chess moves. The playing field and the family reunion. It’s not the stress of a duplicitous taxation; it’s the adaptability to community, growing up, grace.

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Letter from the Editor: 60 years. For 60 years the Phoenix Literary Arts Magazine has been at the heart of arts and culture at the University of Tennessee. Since our first edition in 1959, the magazine has always strived to stand as a bastion of free expression and creativity for the university community.

Now, 60 years later, our goals have not changed. Everyday we commit ourselves to creating a product that showcases some of the best creative minds the state has to offer while providing students with a platform to speak truth to power and share their stories through art. But the future seems so uncertain. Across the country student media publications must fight for survival. As profitability becomes the sole metric for success, student-driven publications like the Phoenix struggle to remain fiscally viable.

Of course, change in inevitable. Regardless of what the future will bring, the Phoenix stands resolute in its dedication to free expression. We will continue to evolve, to move forward, to support those who have supported us.

To my staff, this magazine is nothing without you. Thank you for everything that you do. To the creatives that return to the Phoenix year after year, we love you, we want to celebrate you and we thank you for your contributions. Finally, to the faculty, staff and alumni that make the Phoenix possible, thank you. You are our rock.

Here’s to 60 wonderful years of arts and literature at the university.

Cheers, Collin Green Editor in Chief Colophon: Phoenix Editorial Staff is made up of Editor in Chief, Collin Green; Art Editor, Zoe Evans, Prose Editor, Peyton Vance; Poetry Editor, Jenna Dirksen; and Copy Editor, Alyson Sliger.

Our Lead Designer is Lukas McCrary and our Social Media Coordinator is Emma Vieser.

A special thanks to our supporting staff members Ben Hurst, Eric Rouse, Laura Lee Cochran, Victoria Mullins, Garrett Anderson, Sadie Kimbrough, Taylor McMickle, and Neeley Moore.

The Phoenix team is advised by Director of Student Media Jerry Bush.

For exclusive articles and more information on the Phoenix visit our website: www.phoenixmagazine.net

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