Phoenix Literary Magazine Fall 2018

MAGAZINE

Issue sixty-one Volume one Fall 2018

MAGAZINE Issue sixty-one

Volume one

Printed in Knoxville, Tennessee

Fall 2018

Art Spit That Out, Honey! Hanna Dice All the Cartoons Ryan Whitener Incurably Mary Badillo Special FX Aya H. Foundations Abby Hamilton Going the distance Bill Rerick Random Weave Dana Potter and Lila Shull Sweet Rose Reid Arowood Internal Tori Barret Fruit Bat Anatomy Joanna Huntoon Yellow Cloth Sue Choi Painting the Town Pink Kelly Moore Phantasmic Caroline Rowcliffe Untitled Ashley Bergner Alone

Tatiana Tikhonova

Indistinguishable Nicole Gentry

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Poetry Golden Hour Andrew Kochamba Turquoise Teeth Nik Buhler Period Poem Dena Baker Barkeep Amber Albritton The Lineage of Snakes Catherine Dartez Were You On the Moon Brynna Williams Formaldehyde Sarah Ali Husk Angelina Parrino The Haiku I Wrote Eric Rouse and Peyton Vance A Jack Night Lacking a Thesis Statement Shane Moore Alone at a Party Ashley Baker

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Prose On Being an Alcoholic Josh Sales

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Golden Hour Andrew Kochamba There is a dangerous freedom found in a moving car at sunset.

Imposing, intoxicating, the windows overflow with gold.

When your music is loud enough, when it swells like syrup, breathe deeply.

Let it all well up within you.

It will overpower, consume you.

Let the corners of your mouth curl slowly up your wet face.

Perfect bliss.

You will be tempted to fear death.

If you must, make it brief.

It will pass.

In this fear, you won’t fear what comes, but what you’ll leave behind.

Breathe deeply.

Wrapped in this holy catharsis, you’ll learn to carry on peacefully.

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All the Cartoons On Your Shower Curtain Have Seen You Naked Ink on paper Ryan Whitener

Incurably Found object, wood Mary Badillo

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Turquoise Teeth Nik Buhler I could be your personal Van Gogh for you i would swallow gallons of your favorite color.

Saliva sweet with turpentine retching at the synthetic chemicals that overflow from the stem of my neck.

Sunflowers blooming up towards the sky yellow reaching meeting golden light the stars cry out in jealousy.

Light of my life shining like the sun who was never so bright yet you are setting at the apex of my life.

Your fire fills my lungs air emptying out whispering into empty spaces the sadness will(not) last forever.

Thats what i tell myself as i scrub my gums with turquoise toothpaste.

You never cared for blues.

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Period Poem

Dena Baker

Special FX Acrylic and oil on canvas board Aya H.

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At half past the month, the moon is at its fullest, the demons at their loudest, and my blood at its reddest.

I would like to say sorry to the spider, whose web I demolished late last Monday afternoon.

And to my dented pillow, now the holder of not only my dreams, but my rage, and pain— —red, like my innards, tearing themselves apart at half past the month, permanently bound, doubled, over by the mutiny within myself.

And how could I tell you what it feels like when your body declares war against itself.

Maybe the bones in my back saw it coming shards of blood and bits of me came running and I said let the world see.

I wanted to tell the books I’m ready to define “woman” I crossed out “vehicle wearing breasts and a vagina” and instead wrote, “backbone of society” Did you know Bloody Sunday is less about a battle between men and more about a red riot a scarlet sedition I’ve witnessed every month since I was eleven.

That somehow the battleground inside me was also fit for the seeds of life but maybe the warmth of my blood, coupled with agony swollen sore breasts and an appetite for rage confused them into thinking they could step in penetratingly beastly & uninvited over and over again.

So along with “backbone of society” I wrote: “mother” Because maybe we owe our mothers’ sharp tongues for teaching us how to say (scream) no, 6 all three billion of my sisters and I.

Barkeep Amber Albritton I’ve been sitting here just over an hour.

My friend is always late.

The barkeep is a bald guy with protruding lymph nodes who keeps wiping tables near me In slow, sticky, smears empty tables where I have watched couples come and go.

He looks like Frankenstein.

Immunocompromised Reminding me I need to read more Shelley And use condoms.

He smiles piteously. I smile through him, beyond him to a door that hasn’t opened in seventeen minutes.

I touch the limed rim of my glass hoping he’ll know what I want.

The dark headed skinny girl behind the counter brings me another Jack & Diet with a lime She has a scar under her right butt cheek; her shorts have a half inch inseam.

She’s symmetrical carved ivory.

Glass blue eyes, chestnut hair, oval face Pout mouth, full bottom lip 7

Thin, muscular arms Strong legs in black Brogans She brings my drink without a mistake Lymph-Nodes keeps wiping tables.

His rag smells of mildew and hot sauce.

I touch the rim again, and again, The pretty brunette comes until last call.

She doesn’t bring a drink.

She looks at me directly and hands me a rag.

I smell blood, taste it in the back of my throat Look at the rag she’s holding under my nose.

It’s time to go.

She tells me to take the rag.

I pay.

I leave twenty-eight on an eighteen-dollar bill.

Franken-Nodes picks it up.

I walk over, handing him the bloody rag, take the bill and the money and hand it to the dark headed girl.

She’s putting a bottle on the shelf, almost out of reach, and I see the scar again.

He says her name I hear it but can’t understand what he says I want to taste her name in my mouth Where there’s only salt & pennies She looks directly at me.

She takes the tab.

And doesn’t smile.

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Foundations Digital photography Abby Hamilton

Going the distance Oil on canvas Bill Rerick

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The Lineage of Snakes Catherine Dartez My mother loves tacky ceremonies and expensive cake, or she thinks she must wed every man she fucks.

People stopped sending gifts and well wishes.

Her identities are assigned by a lover’s flavor.

She has no foundation for self-construction.

She must have a magic vagina.

My father calls himself the King of Holdenville.

He snuggles with his BMW and marries busty brunettes with bleached hair.

His childhood mutt mangled a barn cat, so Aunt Marciel gutted his friend with a carving knife.

He didn’t have a mother.

One grandfather preys on beauty queens. His last one committed suicide. Most of his children disappeared.

Grandchildren, too.

He grew too old to accommodate his own template for worth.

He and my mother suffer each other.

They ran out of options.

Another grandfather blew the brains out of a diseased cat in front of my school bus with a .30-06. A little girl cried.

Teenage boys laughed.

His shrapnel scars shined pink on his abdomen.

His unbuttoned, Oxford shirt billowed in the wind.

He’s dead, now.

My grandmother walks barefoot on shards from broken mirrors.

She scatters slivers beneath the feet of descendants and prays for our salvation. It is blasphemous to confront her.

She empties the trash bin beside her husband’s rocker recliner centered with his sixty-inch Ultra HD flat screen.

She sets his meals there, too.

I pulled a copperhead from the toilet while my ex-stepfamily stood on the kitchen counter.

As a favor, I didn’t chase them with it.

I did wake my stepmother from a nap with a king snake dangling in her face. I was already an inconvenience.

I’m not sorry.

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Were You On the Moon Brynna Williams You have to wake up sometime.

That’s what I’d like to say to myself, but it’s so peaceful to sleep.

Warm hands on my back, the moment I open my eyes, will feather into wings, birds, fly into the sun and leave me freezing.

If I wake up, I’ll have to abandon the stars I’ve been camping between, that tent made of crystal dust, the sleeping bag stuffed with tears.

I can’t stay here forever, and I know it, but I still have to.

All this time, I’ve been swallowing spoonfuls of you, trying to keep that taste tucked in my cheeks, to line the backs of my teeth, dye my tongue your favorite shade of 11

blue, but it just won’t stick.

There are so few moments left, and I can’t help but be aware I’m the sand in the hourglass, slipping back through to the other side,

no hands to hold on.

One more turn around the moon; I thought I’d make it in time, but there were footprints in that greengray dirt, tiny beside the craters,

with clouds hovering above them of that very same dirt, perfectly still, as if they’d just been left.

Random Weave Screenprint Dana Potter and Lila Shull 12

Sweet Rose -aaperformance performancebybyReid ReidArowood Arowood Materials: assortment of Gazing Balls, bed of silk roses, Tab TabSoda Soda“cube”, “cube”,Tab TabSoda Sodafountain, fountain,Tab TabSoda Sodarefreshment station,station, refreshment perforated perforated room divider, room divider, pink lighting, pink lighting, sweet rose sweet scented rose scented fog, custom fog, custom foil drapery, foil drapery, custom foil “skirt”, Ms. custom foil “skirt”, PacmanMs. mega Pacman projection, megafloral projection, headed floral mannequin headed mannequin sculpture sculpture

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Sweet Rose Hair by Kat Lewis at Culture Hair Studio Sweet Rose Makeup by DANA and Haley Hill featured music Hair

by SOPHIE Sweet Rose Hair byShow Kat Lewis at Culture Studio Sweet Rose Makeup by DANA and Haley Hill Show featured music by SOPHIE

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Internal Monotype print on BFK Tori Barret

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Formaldehyde Sarah Ali I only know how to make messes. ‘Graceful’ isn’t part of my vernacular.

I long to be tidy; I don’t know how to be elegant.

At every meal I drop my fork, wipe my mouth, carry napkins in my bag at every occasion.

Everything is chaotic and Here I am and I crack open my ribs And, oh, oh god, there’s blood pouring out like moonlight It’s everywhere and my imperfections are splayed out for the world to admire.

This is what the poet cries about at night.

When I die, don’t coat my body in formaldehyde.

Let my body rot in the cool Earth; for it’s from the Earth I rise It’s to the Earth I return.

Husk Angelina Parrino She waits for him in the brazen light sews seeds in the garden to pass time tomatoes, beets, melons all ruby cheeks and burnt lips she returns christens the floor with undressed words loose layers, Lady’s slippers; symbiosis set high on a shelf one needs the other more She lays

on a bed of eidolons ankles crossed like a young girl telling stories to herself A lost muse only dances in the dark She dreams plants die demoted to ghosts while still breathing tomorrow comes and she empties her wants into an expensive purse goes to the market, buys corn, its cheap only $3.00 per bushel 16

Fruit Bat Anatomy Ink pen on paper Joanna Huntoon

The Haiku I Wrote While Stuffed In The Backseat of a 2006 Honda Acord on Our Way Back From Spring Break 2018 Eric Rouse and Peyton Vance Down the road we go, The crisp wind moans through mountains, My ass is the swamp

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A Jack Night Lacking a Thesis Statement Shane Moore Another toast to forget the past not understanding the irony of blackouts or the denotation of feelings that burble from the bass of your sternum to the port of your larynx

All of you celebrate until you crash combat loneliness with lonely people couches to beds, acquaintances to partners only to wake, get coffee, and talk about nothing

Yellow Cloth Oil pastel on paper Sue Choi

Fiddle acoustic versions to make it more Tennessee so young adults may balter barefoot on a tulip wood floor not to worry of those who consider depression a synonym for a bad day

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Alone at a Party Ashley Baker It’s the big house—a sore thumb stucco white against the dirt hut village.

From the roof, I watch the girls take the little ones for a dip. I heard the youngest drowned the next year.

Convince me I’m jealous, not curious.

Which is a sin?

Even then, I’m excusable.

Passing, like waves Like the rose petal taste Like the smell of plantains and black beans Onions so strong my eyes water.

It would be so easy to fall past lead paint and stairs with no railings, tile walls But I know I won’t land in the water.

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Painting the Town Pink Oil on linen Kelly Moore

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Phantasmic Digital photography Caroline Rowcliffe

On Be ing an Al co ho lic

A semi true story

by Josh Sales

T

here gets to a point in every alcoholic’s life when he or she will be confronted by family and friends, coworkers and colleagues, acquaintances and even strangers for the talk. ‘We are worried about you.’ ‘Your drinking scares us.’

‘Wallace, if you leave I won’t love you anymore.’ ‘You’re fired.’

‘What you’re doing isn’t healthy.’ Etc etc. These talks will either result in the self-realization that the speaker is right and that the alcoholic does in fact need help with their problem (step one: admitting you have a problem), or the response of the alcoholic will be to take a whiskey glass, drop a sugar cube in, add two dashes angostura bitters and orange peel, muddle, then pour two ounces rye whiskey before adding a ball of ice and a luxardo cherry garnish (step two: admitting that a higher power can restore our sanity). I introduce to you the Old Fashioned. What a higher power it is.

It had been three months, two weeks, six days and approximately eleven hours since Wallace had uprooted himself and left everything and everyone behind to move across country to the grand city of San Francisco.

Wallace was idealistic. A romantic. A fool. To Wallace, San Francisco offered the promise of inspiration. A city of immigrants built on the promise of wealth in the era of the gold rush, San Francisco had prospered under the building of the continental railroad, the increased shipping of goods up and down the golden coast of California and bloomed into a cultural hub that would gain its notoriety and fame worldwide as the Paris of the West. To Wallace, San Francisco offered a promise of something new. A California native, Wallace fell into the foot and handholds of the Smoky Mountains after his stint with the military brought him to the Southern Appalachians. Thus, he found himself nestled firmly against the outskirts of Knoxville. Something about the mountains called to his desire of exploration. Something about the history of moonshiners, southern writers and century old wars spoke to the romantic in him. But after multiple failed relationships, bans from drinking holes, and numerous mornings waking up with a hangover in random beds,

relocating to his home state of California offered a refreshing start to his quarter life. It had been three months, two weeks, six days, and approximately eleven hours since Wallace had come to the city on the Bay, moving back to California from the eastern boundaries of Tennessee. It had also been three months, two weeks, six days and approximately eleven hours since Wallace had been happy.

The first time that Wallace had met her, he had had no intention of being helplessly beguiled. Their first date had started with Wallace introducing her and their bartender to the Richmond Gimlet; a subtle change to the original gin drink in which one muddles three mint leaves in the shaker prior to adding the remainder of ingredients: ice, 2.5oz gin of choice (though I would like to note that Hendricks is in fact the superior choice), .5oz fresh lime juice, and .5oz simple syrup. One then shakes the ingredients until ice cold, and strains into a cocktail glass with a garnish of a lime wheel. After dinner, the two had proceeded to the Peter Kern Library, one of Knoxville, Tennessee’s top bars. He ordered himself an Old Fashioned, and she had decided on one of the literary themed drinks the bar was famous for.

Content with their intoxication, the two spent countless hours conversing about their beliefs in politics, religion, and the patriarchy. Wallace fancied himself a feminist, and in her eyes, he wasn’t far off from the truth. At the end of the night, as he had asked permission to kiss her, he couldn’t even finish his sentence before she leaned in and planted her own firm kiss upon his lips. He knew then that she was also shamelessly enthralled with him.

Wallace sat alone at the bar of The Gold Dust. He was alone, accompanied only by the melting ice in his watereddown drink. The cherry floated in the remains, stained by the amber whiskey. At the point of writing this story, I believe it’s important to note, that the Gold Dust Lounge had, most unfortunately, been officially closed. The reason for the closing of the Gold Dust is not readily available for public knowledge. A few short years after the Lounge had to

It had also been three months, two weeks, six days and approximately eleven hours since Wallace had been happy.

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Untitled Oil on canvas Ashley Bergner relocate from their Union Square location due to a dispute with their original land lord. It could be that the new location paled in comparison to the original that allegedly served the first Irish Coffee on the Western Coast sometime in the 1950s.

Wallace, though, had the extreme good fortune of being able to visit the Gold Dust prior to its untimely closing.

“Nother round?” The bartender asked. Wallace looked up from his drink and nodded a quick yes. The bartender smiled, a few wrinkles on her tanned face. From under her golden bangs timid cobalt eyes leveled on Wallace as she stirred a teaspoon of simple syrup and a few dashes of bitters together before dropping in chunks of ice and pouring over two jiggers worth of bourbon. She took a fresh orange off of the bar table and skinned off a piece of the peel, folding it in half and letting the oils mist over the drink before dropping in the rest alongside the side of the glass. Down into the ice.

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She lifted her gaze from the improperly made Old Fashioned to the young man in front of her.

Sliding the drink across the bar, she lingered for a second before motioning to leave.

“The cherry?” he asked.

No one in San Francisco made the Old Fashioned right.

A flash of a smile from her as her copper toned hand reached out to grab the glass back.

Freckles raced up her soft skin. He gestured a thanks with a smile in return. The bartender’s slender fingers dipped into the fruit tray, plucked a dark black cherry out of its container and plopped it into the drink. She winked at Wallace as she placed it in front of him. He wanted to ask her what time she was off work. He wanted to take her out, have a few drinks and see what trouble they could get into. He hadn’t had enough to drink for that yet though. Instead, he lifted the glass to his lips and slowly sipped at the concoction (Step three: turn our will and lives over to alcohol as we understand it).

Outside, the sun beat down over the waters of the bay. Fisherman’s Wharf was rampant with tourists. Asian families meandered around taking photos of everything with disposable cameras you could buy at any of the corner markets. An Ethiopian street vendor sold sambusa and dabo kolo from his cart. Latina women circled around an observation deck overlooking a clump of sea lions laid out in the sun and a pack of white women hustled off to Ghirardelli’s Square. Wallace could remember a time with his family years ago when he had been six or so. They had come to visit his Grandmother who owned a house on the East Bay and rode over to San Francisco on a ferry. He had gotten sea sick, and was upset that his siblings got to eat clam chowder out of bread bowls when all he got was a ginger ale out of a can and some of the oyster crackers that had come with the soup. They walked up the Embarcadero, and climbed the stairs up into Ghirardelli’s square. He could remember the mermaids sitting in the middle of the fountain in the plaza. Their jade tone marred over the years to a rusted corrosion. Young Wallace rejoiced when they walked into the chocolate store, and the attendee at the door offered each one of them a sample piece of candy.

At first his mother had told the employee that Wallace had an upset stomach from the ferry and would have to save his chocolate for later, placing the sparkling wrapped nugget into her purse, but upon his mother turning her back, the attendee winked at Wallace and handed him a second piece undetected by the rest of his family.

A short trolley ride up the hill into the start of SoMa, Wallace found himself just outside of The Tempest. It had quickly become one of his favorite dive bars in the city. This dive bar is home to a grittier, younger crowd. Unlike other sister dive bars around the city where dock workers, sailors, and cheating husbands unionize under the comradery of a stiff drink, The Tempest was more than happy to cater to the new hipster crowd that ironically ordered boilermakers with PBR cans and a shot of Old Crow for nine dollars a round. The pool table in the middle of the establishment was marred with decade old stains, torn felt and sticker upon sticker covering up the original wood panels. Hanging lanterns remained unlit as the evening sun stood over the warehouse buildings between the Tempest and the shoreline some blocks away.

The smell of sour seaweed lingered over the area. The delta breeze swung back up the inside of the peninsula taking with it all the noises that perforated over the bay.

Wallace ordered himself a beer, and sat by himself at a corner table facing the entryway. The table next to him featured two bohemian types discussing the importance of water conservation in light of the ongoing California drought. “…. a housing development down in SOHO is telling their residents that they have to water their lawns or face a fine.”

“Wait, what? Why? I got fined by the city for going over my allotment last month!”

“Apparently the brown grass in their yards depreciates their home values, so the HOA is enforcing them to keep them green.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“I promise you I am not.”

The wash of their conversation faded into the music coming from the jukebox. Some nineties grunge song that dripped from the wall speakers. It was now a little after seven in the afternoon and Wallace was three or four beers into this particular establishment. It had now been three months, two weeks, six days and seventeen hours since Wallace had left life behind in his adopted city of Knoxville and relocated to San

Francisco, California. He put in for a studio apartment in Daly City. He figured that at around two thousand a month for the rental, plus a couple hundred for utilities and a few hundred more to buy groceries, gas and pay the bills, he could go for six or so months without work before hitting the bottom of his savings. It had been three months, two weeks, six days, and seventeen hours and Wallace’s bank account was closer to zero than it should have been. It had been three months, two weeks, six days, and seventeen hours and his love life was even lower (step four: make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves).

It was then that Pekin walked in through the door of the Tempest. Her black shirt was dotted with constellations.

Wallace could make out a handful of them. The Virgo somewhere near her exposed left hip bone. The Sagittarius crossing over her shoulder on one side and the Capricornus on the other disappearing into the folds of her leather jacket.

Wallace watched with intent as she approached the bartender and ordered herself a vodka soda with two limes. She held up her index and middle finger together in case the bartender hadn’t heard her, and when she had paid for her drink she found her way over to his table. “Of all the gin bars in the world…” She began.

“This isn’t really a gin bar,” Wallace cut her off.

“Isn’t it?”

“Hardly. You’re drinking vodka.”

“Gin is like vodka.”

Wallace raised his eyebrows at her. Pekin’s tresses of towcolored hair bounced over her shoulders as she sat opposite him. He asked her once, maybe a decade ago when they had first met in high school, how she had gotten that most peculiar of names. When she had told Wallace she had no idea where it came from, or what it stood for, Wallace had just accepted it, knowing that more eclectic names were birthed out of the 60’s and 70’s in America. “Gin is nothing like vodka,” he said.

“Oh, come on, both are made from grain alcohols,” She said.

“Whiskey is made out of grain alcohols.”

“Whiskey isn’t clear.”

“Unaged whiskey is.”

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“Who drinks unaged whiskey?”

“Moonshine?”

“It’s the twenty-first century, who drinks moonshine?”

“Try all of the South.”

“We’re not in the South.”

“Nope,” Wallace mumbled to himself, “no we are not.”

He polished off the beer he had been drinking and set the bottle down onto the table a bit harder than he had intended.

“Can I get you another round?”

“See if they have moonshine?” She said.

Wallace shook his head as he walked up to the bar. He scanned the different levels of shelves that lined the back wall.

His wallet was beginning to feel light in his pocket. He looked back at Pekin still rooted to the table. She was looking back at him, her protean gray eyes breaking through the crowd.

“What can I get you?” the bartender asked. They had met back up about a month ago, at an Irish pub in the Mission district in a dazed night that Wallace couldn’t remember half the details of. He could piece together her fighting with her date. He had recognized her as the cute sophomore he had a crush on his senior year of high school. A few wise cracks resulted in a quick bar brawl, and the two were reunited a solid seven years later. “Hey. Buddy. What can I get you?” The bartender said.

Wallace turned to them and shrugged an apology. He was rewarded with a scoff. “Any moonshine?” Wallace asked.

The bartender nodded.

“I’ll take two shots,” Wallace said.

He turned his back to the bar and rested against it, watching Pekin finish her drink. The bartender set down the two shots of moonshine on the wooden counter. “That’ll be fourteen dollars.”

Wallace turned around and placed the last twenty from his wallet on the bar. “Keep the change.” He knew he could mooch off of Pekin for the remainder of the night as she had done with him multiple times before.

Wallace and Pekin did their shots of moonshine. She grimaced at the sharpness of the harsh alcohol. She laughed afterwards, her leg rubbing against Wallace’s under the table.

The two shared a momentary gaze. Her marble stained irises shimmering with the tinge of intoxication edging upon her.

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The two sat at that table as the minutes ticked into hours that moved the night sky into a darker pitch held off by the city lights and spotted by the illuminated constellations nearly translucent in the city. They exchanged war stories. The time he flipped his car going a hundred miles an hour and woke up in the hospital the next morning still drunk. How she lost her virginity while intoxicated because she didn’t love her boyfriend of the time. When Wallace had blacked out and broken up with the girl he had been dating for the past couple months by asking out her best friend. (Step Five: Admit to alcohol, ourselves, and another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.)

The two shared a drunken Uber ride to their apartments, Pekin resting her head on Wallace’s shoulder as the driver took them to her apartment. She had invited him in for a night cap, and he felt like he sat in the back of that Prius for a half hour before declining. His mind was on her. Back in Knoxville.

Who she was with. If they were kissing her. If they had asked permission first.

Four weeks, two days later and a short stunt down the coast, Wallace found himself sitting on the sands of Cowell Beach in Santa Cruz. I want to note that seventy-five miles north, Pekin was still in bed with a new boyfriend she had met a few nights after she had shared an Uber with Wallace.

Having lost his drinking partner, Wallace wallowed through various bars in Oakland, on the East Bay, before deciding to head down to his half-brother’s house in Santa Cruz.

The surf was calm, the tide, still out. That early in the morning, the beach was modestly dotted with a handful of joggers and a dozen surfers throwing on their wetsuits to get in a few waves before going off to work. An empty bottle of Jack Daniels laid next to him in a brown paper bag. Wallace was tired, but sleep hadn’t come for him, nor was he sure that he would welcome it that openly. Wallace braced himself to stand up, stumbled, got to his knees and vomited onto the beach (step six: be entirely ready to let alcohol remove all defects of character). He wiped his mouth, the grit of sand sticking to the corner of his lips. Getting to his feet, he scanned the horizon. Some of the joggers were actively altering their paths to avoid Wallace and his sick. He wasn’t sure if he could see his car in the parking lot. The Ferris Wheel on the Boardwalk began to turn.

Walking up West Cliff Drive to Center Street, Wallace retraced his steps from the night before. His mouth tasted like

two would actively make The Red Room a drinking spot of choice. Because of that, he gave himself a one out of thirty chance that tonight of all nights they would pick that bar to patron. He was halfway up the stairs when he figured that would make betting odds one to six hundred. Wallace was greeted at the top of the stairs by a mid-twenties man in the stereotypical black shirt and jeans bouncer uniform.

The man asked for Wallace’s ID, which he provided willingly.

The bouncer turned the out of state ID over a few times, looked Wallace over for a minute and handed it back to him.

“Welcome to The Red Room,” he said as he opened the door leading into the main room of the bar.

I have a theory that bars are named for several reasons.

The Red Room, unmistakably either derives its name from the décor, or decorated itself based off the title the owners had decided to already give it. Wallace was unsure of which came first but knew without a doubt after stepping into the interior of the bar that he had found a place he could comfortably call home for the night. The velvet couches sat in front of a center fireplace. Padded booths lined the walls. Dim lit. Full of laughing people at the tables that filled the room. The bar itself bent around a corner, immediately to the left after entering the room as if an old friend ready to greet one to the

Alone Intaglio print Tatiana Tikhonova

throw up. His eyes were dry and he had a slight limp with his right leg. The button up shirt he was wearing had started to stiffen with sweat dried in the morning breeze. He had to stop more than once to retie his shoe laces.

The Red Room is for all intents and purposes a college bar in Santa Cruz, California. During the active school year The Red Room is occupied by the best minds of Banana Slug Nation. Years prior, a high school senior Wallace had a run in with a troupe of University of California, Santa Cruz activists during a peace protest in the Presidio at the tip of the San Francisco peninsula. He remembered distinctively falling in love with three different women that night for three distinct reasons. Coming down to Santa Cruz nearly seven years later offered little chance of running into any of those three, but Wallace figured if there was a place to arrange a rendezvous, it would be at The Red Room. His mind for the past month had been stuck in the fog of her. He had drunkenly called her a half dozen times, and deleted her number from his phone thrice. San Francisco had changed from the romantic, idyllic city into a maze that kept him trapped in drunk repeated thoughts of her.

Sometime around eleven o’clock the night prior, Wallace had walked up the side staircase of The Red Room on the two hundred block of Locust street.

The three women he had met at the protest were then all freshmen at UCSC, which would mean at this point they would be either working on their post graduate degree, or have moved on to another watering hole. Wallace gave himself even odds that of the three, two had remained in Santa Cruz. He gave himself one out of ten odds that at least one of the

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party.

Wallace waited patiently for a bartender near the crook that bent the bar. When it was his turn, he ordered himself a Hendricks Fitzgerald. The bartender shamefully admitted he didn’t know the drink, and Wallace obligingly walked him through it. “Fill a tumbler with ice, add a measure of Hendricks gin, an ounce of simple syrup and a half measure of fresh lemon juice. Shake, and strain into an old-fashioned glass.

Add two dashes bitters and stir. Garnish with a lime wheel.”

The bartender remarked that it was similar to a gin sour, but with the addition of bitters, to which Wallace confessed was an adequate description, but that the addition of the Angostura gave a classic warm weather drink like the gin sour a more Autumn feel.

In contrast, using Hendricks, which was famous for its rose and cucumber notes, made it perfect for an early spring drink. The bartender refused to charge Wallace, stating that he was paid in the lesson of a new drink he’d be impressing the college kids with for the next few weeks.

Wallace thanked the man and began to walk the perimeter of the bar (Step seven: humbly ask alcohol to remove our shortcomings). Small, college-aged groups sat at tables, or crowded around a booth. A few were involved in a heated debate on the other side of the fireplace. Having walked full circle, Wallace took a seat at the far end of the bar, leaving a few seats between him and the next person.

He sat, admired the energy that raced through the room. It was friendly here. There wasn’t angst like in a dive bar. But it wasn’t as pretentious and demanding as a speakeasy. Wallace melted there, becoming just another face in the crowd.

He watched the bartender make a Fitzgerald for a girl in a knitted beanie. She sipped at it, her face lighting up before she pushed it over to her friend and insisted that she also try it. They passed it amongst their group of friends, and soon the bartender was making a half dozen orders of the drink. He looked over at Wallace and shot a quick ok hand signal.

From a young age, Wallace had been a hard-headed individual. He was raised in a small farming town a few hours north of San Francisco by a father who wouldn’t stop him from engaging in fist fights.

Then after the army, there were the women Wallace had in his life. A handful of relationships that tended to always teeter off a precipice as Wallace tended to push things to their absolute limits. In that regard, it was four months, two weeks, and twenty-one hours since Wallace had been happy.

He ran over the names and matched them to faces. There was Marie, Allison, and Janessa. And of course, her, the one whom he loved for the past two years of living in Knoxville. The one who had encouraged him to move to San Francisco to follow his dreams of living in that city. The one who changed her mind when the time for him to leave finally grew near.

The one who had told him if he left that that would be it for them. Four months, two weeks, and twenty-one hours ago, Wallace left anyways (step eight: make a list of all the persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all).

He had at one point tried to reconcile with each of them through email or a phone call. Each time he received no response, or was almost promptly hung up on. It was at which time that Wallace figured it would be safer to just move on without the reconciliation (step nine: make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others).

Wallace was working on his second Fitzgerald when the girl with the knitted beanie walked up to him and sat in the seat next to his. She must have been a year or two younger than himself. Her creamy olive skin had no wrinkles to it besides for around her emerald eyes. Evidence of how much she laughed. “So, Kyle said you’re the one to blame for this addicting new drink.” She gestured at her own empty glass set beside Wallace’s half-finished drink. He took it that Kyle was the bartender.

“I guess I am.” Wallace said.

“I love the name too. Is it named after F. Scott Fitzgerald

His bank account was near empty.

His liver ached. His head was filled with the realization that San Francisco had not offered the renaissance he had so desperately sought for in his life.

27

Indistinguishable Gouache and ink on paper Nicole Gentry

by chance?” She said.

“Fitzgerald was a gin man, but he was more apt to order a Gin Rickey. The Fitzgerald was invented by a man named DeGroff who wasn’t born until after F. Scott Fitzgerald had died.”

“So why Fitzgerald then?”

“DeGroff worked in a bar in New York at the time where a drink was already named after Hemingway. When he invented the Fitzgerald, a regular of his insisted that it also receive a classy literature name.”

“Well, aren’t you just a wealth of knowledge, sir.”

“My name is Wallace. You are?”

“Varah.”

“Varah?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever met a Varah before in my life.”

“And you never will. So you better buy me a drink so that I stick around.”

Wallace couldn’t help but to smile at her forwardness. He got Kyle’s attention, and asked for two Fitzgeralds.

“Told you they’d be popular,” the bartender commented.

Wallace paid for the round and turned his attention to Varah.

The two engaged in discussion over the merit of drinking in a bar versus at home. At first, Wallace noted that the option of drinking at home would always turn out to be cheaper than drinking at a bar. To which Varah countered with the fact that it was only by going out to bars that we interacted with other people, expanded ourselves through conversation and grew as an individual by assimilating into a new census that was created by the quorums only offered in such public places.

Wallace relented, admitting defeat in the debate (step ten: continue to take personal inventory, and when we are wrong, promptly admit it). By the end of the night, Varah had kissed him on the cheek and invited him out to a bonfire out on the beach. Wallace agreed, but insisted on walking as the cool breeze would allow him to sober up some.

On their way to Cowell beach, they stopped in a bodega and grabbed a few bottles. Varah insisted on trying to replicate the Fitzgerald with ingredients from the small store, but Wallace pointed out that they didn’t offer bitters and therefore there would be no way for them to actually make the drink. He settled on a bottle of Tennessee whiskey himself,

and for the rest of the night he sat on the beach with Varah next to him. Her group of friends had started a bonfire that climbed into the night sky before them. Varah talked about her studies at the university. Wallace would nod along, lost in his own thoughts of the woman back in Knoxville once again.

Taking drams from the bottle of Jack Daniels, his eyes just stared off to where the wisps of smoke and heat warped the constellations in the night sky. He wasn’t there, and in the morning, when the bottle had been drunk, neither was Varah.

Wallace stood in front of The Red Room, the next morning, staring up at the second-floor windows where the 28

night before he had become a welcomed addition to the bar’s family. He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed her number by memory. It rung three times before she picked up.

“Hello?” She said.

“Hey,” he said. There was a silence on the line.

“How’ve you been?”

“Fine,” he said. They both knew he was lying.

“How’s San Francisco?”

“It’s great.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I’ve gotten to meet a lot of new people.”

“Oh, that’s cool… Wallace?”

“Yeah?”

“Nothing. It’s nothing.”

“I miss you.”

“I miss you too.”

Wallace’s phone died. He stared at it in his hand as the California sun beat upon his neck.

It had been five months, four weeks, five days and three hours since Wallace had moved across the United States to live in San Francisco, and his bags were once again packed; organized perfectly into his car. His bank account was near empty. His liver ached. His head was filled with the realization that San Francisco had not offered the renaissance he had so desperately sought for in his life. The drive from San Francisco, California to Knoxville, Tennessee was two thousand, four hundred and eighty-one miles. At an average of seventy-five miles an hour, without stops, it would take nearly thirty-three hours. With stops for gas, food and restroom breaks, roughly thirty-six. Add in a stop for sleep, and it would take Wallace forty-five hours. At the twelve-hour mark, right outside of Flagstaff, Arizona, his radio stopped working. He would be forced to continue the trip sans music.

Wallace pushed on, making it to Albuquerque, New Mexico before he called it good for the first day of travel. At the start of the next day, he spent a solid five minutes staring at the tall cans of domestic beer in the gas station before he reached for a bottle of water and getting back onto the road (step eleven: seek through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious 29

contact with alcohol as we understand it, praying only for knowledge of its will for us and the power to carry that out).

It was two in the morning when he arrived in Knoxville the next night. He greeted his old roommate, Allen, in the driveway of Allen’s new house. He had agreed to put Wallace up on his couch for a while until Wallace could get reestablished in town.

Wallace found himself a new job, rented a new apartment, and started to get his life together after sabotaging it for the past six months. It was six months, a week, four days and thirteen hours since he had left Knoxville.

It was six months, a week, four days and thirteen hours since he had been happy. But I think he was getting there.

I’ve been told that the Peter Kern Library is one of the oldest speakeasies in America to have avoided being shut down during the era of Prohibition. A panel in the wall of The Oliver Hotel lobby separates the bar from the rest of the world, and inside bartenders make handcrafted cocktails to woo their patrons. It was here that Wallace found himself one summer night, having bounced around the various bars that downtown had to offer. Now it may be a gimmick, but the fact that they had changed their menu from being printed on the inside of old dictionaries to a regular flat paper bothered Wallace. He had been gone for six months, but it seemed that a lot had changed in the city he had adopted as his own.

The wall panel slid open, and a handful of people entered the room. It was a Friday night, and the place was starting to get crowded. Wallace’s eyes lingered on one of the women in the group though. It had been six months, two weeks, three days and seventeen hours since he had left Knoxville, Tennessee. Since he had left her. Since he had been happy.

The bartender took a whiskey glass, dropped a sugar cube in, added two dashes angostura bitters and orange peel, muddled, then poured two ounces rye whiskey before adding a ball of ice and a luxardo cherry garnish. A perfect Old Fashioned. Wallace stood up from his seat at the bar, left the untouched drink behind, and walked over to her (step twelve: having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs). *

*

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Letter from the Editor There is a unifying quality to art and literature that is often overlooked and unappreciated today. In our fast-paced society, we so often neglect the aspects of ourselves that relish the calm moments of repose found in the pages of books and the walls of the gallery. Phoenix seeks to bring writers and artists together to remind our readers of the culture and creativity that surrounds us, whether we are mindful of it or not.

Phoenix is a magazine designed to break the veil of familiarity and to bring the creatives of the University to the forefront of your attention. We received an unprecedented number of submissions this semester and I want to extend my deepest gratitude to all who entrusted our staff with their work. You are all extraordinary. The talent and creativity of this University never ceases to amaze me.

My staff has been nothing short of brilliant this semester and I am so grateful for their commitment in making Phoenix the best it can be. I know greater things are on the horizon both for Phoenix and for each one of you.

Best wishes, Peyton Whorley Editor-in-Chief

Colophon Phoenix Editorial Staff is made of Editor-in-Chief, Peyton Whorley; Prose Editor, Collin Green; Poetry Editor, Monica Brashears; Art Editor, Zoe Evans; and Lead Designer, Lukas McCrary.

They are supported by staff members Alyson Sliger, Bailey Fritz, Chloe Masten, and Emma Vieser.

Phoenix is advised by the Interim Director of Student Media, Jerry Bush.

Find our full archive, exclusive features, and more at www.phoenixmagazine.net.

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