quarterlifethe third place

whitman.edu/quarterlife

editormolly esteve

layout editorsbo ericksonhanne jensen

copy editorskarah kemmerlymadeline jacobson

staffgrant bradleywill greggtyler kingparis white

staff artistssam aldenkatie berfield claire johnson

volume 6 issue 4 May 2012

quarterlife is a literary journal pub-lished four times a year that features poetry, short fiction, drama, creative nonfiction, analytic essays, alterna-tive journalism, and any other sort of written work Whitman students might create. Each issue is composed around a given theme that acts as both a spark for individual creativity and a thematic axis for the issue.

quarterlife is an exercise in creative subjectivity, a celebration of the con-ceptual diversity of Whitman writers

when presented with a single theme. Each quarterlife theme acts as the proverbial elephant in the room, fragmented by individual percep-tion: each portion is ostensibly un-connected but ultimately relevant to the whole. Every piece illuminates a different aspect of the theme. In this way, quarterlife magazine participates in the writing process. The magazine is not an indifferent vehicle by which writing is published, but rather is a dynamic medium with which writing is produced.

letter from the editor

We toss around the word “community” a lot on this magazine, which is to say, we always have the bigger picture in mind. Our community elongates every year as new writers submit, allowing their art to become the heft of our magazine. There is something to be said for a magazine as small as ours that reaches out as far as it does. It occupies a unique place—a third type of place—that is mal-leable, one which yields to the whims of the community.

We’re proud of quarterlife’s movement forward this year. We have been polishing away at it, letting the sixth year be a distinct year. And so for its seventh, I hand the reigns to Hanne Jensen, who will continue to build the nest for quarterlife in our unique community.

I have found it is hard to avoid child metaphors when passing the editorial torch. This position can, at times, feel motherly and say-ing goodbye is a little like nudging the birdie out of the nest. It sits at the edge, takes in a great big birdie breath, and 1 … 2 … 3 … leaps!

the nest

contents

Cover Art by Katie Berfield

07Sabrina Wise

Mary Welter

Different kinds of going

A Tale of Thirds

Zoë Ballering The Switch

Michaela Gianotti

Philip Hofius

Matt Morriss

Joshua Tacke

09

going

Problems With Sex

Eyes Open

1113

23

27Christmas in Space 31

Jessica Shatkin Bugs in my Brain 35

Joshua Tacke

Dana Thompson

Nick Michal

Zoë Ballering

Erin Kanzig

Sleeping Together 37

In—

Had Too

The Icebox

Glory Days

39

4048

49

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Different kinds of going

Sabrina Wise

Ask for any Irish air and you’ll hearthe same story: three fishers went sailing,to sea they went sailing, and the women, they reeledon the shore. How they lit each night’s lantern,how they sit there still, knotting baskets by a salty harbor anduntangling the last thin goodbyes. That’s what you’re given by singerswho’ve exported waiting more yearsthan we have.But air is air and

you’ve left (in the old white Toyota witha bowl of agates on the dashboard)to find out what it is you’re here for.So I find the last black salmon you stenciled on the bridge post, to see it or see you, one way or the other.The fish, it’s dry, striking the metal post, straining

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for water, barreling in on itselfas if compression will teach itto swim. You would say thenthat the stencil is alive. I would leavestill deciding. But instead I settle

alone on a boulder and watch the silhouetted gills and fins, thinking about the half-life of biodegradable paintand how one day I want to go like this, fading in from the edgeslike water into a sea sponge,clean living air in my wake.

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Mary Welter

A Tale of Thirds

He came in third. He was pleased.

You see, he was a boy raised on fairy tales and fresh bread: His mother had hands like a carpenter and his father had eyes as soft as the night sky. He was wild and he was unashamed and he believed nothing, save that the world was a curious, rollicking place full of danger and adventure.

He ran through the woods and he cut logs with a sharp axe and he worked until he tasted salt on his lips, for he knew that life was more than red capes and golden fl ax and houses made of sweets. He checked his closet before he went to sleep and he kept a dull knife underneath his pillow to safeguard against nightmares.

He never wanted to be fi rst, or second, or fourth. He always wanted to be third. Three, he would say, is a safe number. In his heart, he thought it a magic number, but the words magic and hope and faith sat awkwardly on his tongue and he never spoke them aloud.

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He had little, but he was envied, for he found his peace easily. A number, you know, is a kind master. It is constant and unswerving. It skims over lusts and loves and passions; it gets straight to the heart of matters. It is lucky without being sacred, and a comfort without being stifling. In his old age, he thought often of the tales he grew up on. Of the three brothers, of the beanstalk that was climbed three times, of the hero who had to complete three impossible tasks before winning his true love. Of courage and gallantry and evil stepmothers who were sealed in barrels studded with sharp nails and rolled down into the sea and never seen again. He thought and he pondered and he reflected, and then he laughed at his pensiveness, for even as an old man, he was wild to the core, and wildness does not permit such foolish introspection.

He found his pleasure in simple things and was content until the end of his days.

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Zoë Ballering

The Switch

The battle joined, the bitter battle in the time of painted women, painted faces, the tire track of algaeblooming on her back, beady-eyed,hawk-beaked creature, malformed, malcontent,carrying her eggs away from water as the other mother watches with the switch.

The screen door latched above the spanof reaching daughters’ hands,the falling switch, the double hiss from beaky maw, from birch on bone. She digs her heels in—to build her nest; she digs her heels down in sandy loam,a church-day protest in her nicest dress.

The children watch through screen door mesh. She girds herself (the girdle presses out her breath)to thrash the armored flesh, but all for naught:the turtle presses eggs from her cloaca. Cow dogs cower from the falling switchthat makes a second double hiss: from birch on bone, from painted carmine lips.

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She made the switch from birch bark. She made the switch as dogs barked, touched her birthmark to the wire mesh,the mother’s imprint on her farmgirl flesh. “Mother” with a novel love, another tenor, and a new mark needed—one defeated, one unbowed in ugliness, her work completed.

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goingMichaela Gianotti

A rest stop bathroom off of a major freeway somewhere in America

a teenage boy “A”an older boy “B”a teenage girl “C”

A rest stop bathroom off of a major freeway somewhere in America.It is the middle of the night, and it is cold outside.

“A” and “B” enter.There is only one urinal.

“B” pees first.

A: You sure you didn’t see a gas station out there?

B: I thought there would be one here. But it’s just the bathroom and that sign for free coffee.

A: Do you think there’s really free coffee?

B: Do you want free coffee from here?

A: Well, it would be nice to know that there is some

play 4 of watercloset, a collection of short plays in bathrooms

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kind of sustenance available, or maybe at least someone whose job it is to refill the coffee and so when he gets here we could use his phone. You know, if we’re stuck.

B: We’re not stuck. And if we don’t have service, neither will the free coffee guy.

A: Do they have soap in here?

B: Guess not.

A: Listen. Before we go back out there, I need to ask you something. And I don’t want you to think that I’m freaking out because I’m not freaking out, I just want to know if we’re doing a stupid thing.

B: What do you mean?

A: If this is stupid. If we’re making a mistake.

B: We’re fine. We’ll find a gas station. We’re not empty yet.

A: No, it’s not about the gas.

B: Okay. What is it?

A: I don’t know. It’s cold out here.

B: It’s November.

A: I didn’t think it’d be this cold.

B: Yeah.

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A: But what are we doing?

B: We’re fine. Let’s get back in the car.

A: Can we wait a minute? That car’s so small. And it smells weird. I don’t know, it’s making me nauseous.

B: It smells worse in here.

A: I don’t mind it.

B: It smells like death in here.

A: You don’t know what death smells like, and no it can’t smell like that because it smells like bleach.

B: It’s freezing in here.

A: I need a minute okay? I need to think about something.

B: Think faster.

A: Where are we?

B: I don’t know.

A: What state are we in?

B: I don’t know. Somewhere southwest I think.

A: How much longer ‘til we get there?

B: Get where?

A: Where we’re going.

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B: Where are we going?

A: I thought you knew where we were going.

B: I never said I knew where we were going.

A: But isn’t the point to go somewhere?

B: I wasn’t aware that we had a point.

A: So we’re just going.

B: Yeah. We’ve just been going.

A: But where?

B: I don’t know.

A: But –

Long pause.“A” stares at “B”

B: Mexico?

A: Mexico?

B: California? I don’t know. Does it matter right now? The point is not where we’re going, the point is that we’re going, that we’re doing it, that we’re finally doing it. We’re just going.

A: Right.

B: Do you think anybody’s going to come in here?

A: There’s nobody out here.

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B: Cool.

“B” pulls out a small bag of weed and begins to roll a joint.

A: Do you think she’ll be mad?

B: She won’t know.

A: It’s her weed.

B: She won’t know. And it’s our weed.

A: Yeah. Yeah. Do you think I look too clean? Do you think that I look like well-cared for and too hair-cutted? I mean, do I look like a poser? Do I look like somebody who someone might want to beat up?

B: Yeah.

A: Because I’m really afraid that I look, I don’t know, unauthentic. I know that’s stupid but listen, I’m afraid that people will think I’m dumb, that I’m pathetic, that I’m some rich kid who never had to work hard for anything even though it’s not true. I want people to know who I am. I want them to know that I can work hard and that I don’t want to be that kid who didn’t have to work. I don’t want to have to prove anything to them, I want them to just know.

B: Who’s them?

A: I don’t know. Future people. People we’ll meet in the future. Even you. Do you think I’m dumb?

B: No. Ready?

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A: Yeah.

They light up.

A: Do you think she trusts me?

B: She wouldn’t have come with us if she didn’t.

A: But do you think that she’s right to trust me?

B: I don’t know.

A: I wonder how close the nearest gas station could be.

B: Don’t know.

A: I wonder if they’ll even be open.

B: Don’t know.

A: We should make a plan.

B: No plan.

A: We should have a plan. We’ve been gone, what, twenty hours and already we’re stuck.

B: We’re not stuck.

A: We don’t know what we’re doing, we should just go back, we should just turn around and go back. We can apologize. Maybe they didn’t even notice that we’re gone. Maybe they haven’t missed us yet. When we get back we’d have been gone for, what, two days. Two days. We’ve been gone for longer than two days before haven’t we? Yeah, only two days.

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B: I’m not driving back. It’s like we said when we left, the only way forward is to get out, the only way to move forward is to move, to just move and go. We can’t go forward if we don’t go.

A: But there’s nowhere to go.

B: There’s everywhere to go.

A: But we have nowhere to go.

B: We’re out to conquer the world. We’re out to find ourselves. We’re going to sleep outside and climb mountains. We’re going to work at weird places and steal food. We’re going to meet all sorts of people and get in fights and get stuck and we’re going to see things and meet more people and experience things and we’re going to do things, we’re going to actually do things so that once we’ve done things we can write songs about them and stories about them and poems about them because if we want to do anything, if we want to be human beings, we have to go forward because it’s the only place to go.

A: I don’t know.

Enter “C”She looks like she has just been asleep.

She is cold and angry.C: What the hell.

A: Hey.

C: What the fucking hell.

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“B” takes a final drag on the joint before putting it out.

A: You woke up.

C: Where the fuck are we?

A: We don’t know.

C: Do you know what it’s like to wake up alone in a car in the middle of nowhere while there’s a fucking blizzard going on outside and it’s pitch black and oh yeah you are fucking alone in a car freezing to death?

A: It’s snowing?

C: And then, do you know what it’s like to have to try to find your shoes underneath a pile of fucking garbage in the back of your disgusting car, and then when you find your shoes you see that the’re covered in fucking ketchup from the french fries that you threw into the backseat. I hate ketchup! I fucking hate ketchup! And what the hell are you guys doing in this bathroom?

A: Peeing.

C: You’re smoking my weed.

A: Our weed.

C: Excuse me?

A: Your weed.

C: It smells in here.

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A: Like weed?

C: No, like – I don’t know.

A: Sit down.

C: Let’s go back to the car.

B: Do you want to smoke with us?

C: Let’s go back to the car. I hate rest stops.

B: We’re almost out of gas.

C: What?

B: Yeah, it’s on empty. I thought there’d be a gas station here, but there isn’t. Wouldn’t make that much of a difference. I only have ten bucks with me.

“B” exits. “A” and “C” stare at each other.

C: There’s nothing out there. It’s so dark. There’s no lights. It’s so dark and quiet and cold. I hope he’s lying about the gas. I don’t want to get stuck here.

A: We won’t.

C: My family and I used to drive across the country every summer. We’d drive from Wisconsin to Florida to visit my grandma. My dad would wake us up at three in the morning to leave. No traffic that way. He could really go fast on the freeway. And we only

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stopped when we were about to run out of gas. We would cook quesadillas on the engine while the tank filled up and that’s how we always did it. But one time I had to pee so bad, and I couldn’t hold it and we still had a quarter of a tank. My dad only stopped when I started crying. But when I went into the bathroom there was a dead woman. I’d never seen a dead person before but I figured that was what it looked like. Now I always get it mixed up, the smell of bathrooms and death. I can’t tell the difference. Let’s go.

“B” reenters.

B: The car won’t start. I think we’re out of gas.

Long pause.

B: It’s so quiet out there. And dark. It’s really dark.

End.

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Problems With SexPhilip Hofius

VII. Lysichiton americanus

Our island’s lost its skunks.They’ve eaten all our sour cream.Or they’ve just decided to make another self’s shell their home.

I make crawling walks, feigning forager, to the stream traipsing in the Waterman’s backyard forest, just to cop a feeloff skunk cabbages’ early spring.

Who is this place—this hollow? Two of usswathed in red wool blankets in a dark corner and acres of wide, veinyleaves putting a veneer of green over

spilt muck and dead fish dew. Fuck it,I’m going to buy something big, and set it on fire . The supposed comforter,snow, hasn’t lifted itself yet—bears haven’t

come rooting for cathartics to rid them

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of their winter stomachs…I guess it doesn’tso much as lift as sink into the alreadydamp, swamp mess and spill into rubber boots.

VIII. Useless Bay

Skin and hair shed as thoughthey were corn meal sand trickling from beneath peat slabs,glacial till- pulls takenout the roman candle fusebox blown out the eighty-fiveford. The whirl of sun spattersmy windshield and peopletell at me over hot asphalt—words like a mirage- here’sthe erratic boulder at doublebluffs base: crumbling, dumpingits strata and forsaking clasticdikes for fire-works.A friend once told me he’d run for hours through pine brushto collapse under the fastsloughing skin of the island.and as I go on staringdown the weekend--ers with their unleashed puppies,children, campy knuckles, stepping

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stones, heat filled lungs, I slide with the eroding hillside—moon glow now with white light venomfaded above mud--flats and horse-clam extinctionendless and shallowin the clockwork lurchingof the ice carved sound,so sketchy to navigatewhen ebb and floodtake up and over the slackmashing the boat’s nose—creaking,hung up on violent snagof submerged granite.It’s the tide and rocksthat cull us into shapes in fog.

IX. Dawn

The things I put on my body,like neckties, compostable shade,collapsible silt—although,when the words to talk about yoursache in fits for finding, all I can think aboutare drapes. Drapes that I will never be ableto draw, my hands skitteringtoo much to make a line slip—

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like they do—against my skinand wake my hands to olive, shadow. So how can I wake you to wake my hands tohere? I worry aboutsleep and the splotchy sunwashon the side of the cliffright now. But these are things you knowand have heard again and again, like almost anything aboutamateur meteorology, which, by the way, deemsit necessary to close the windows. Talk me in circles, I’ll grin like watchingthe news sedated under alampshade made of beer- anddirt-stained skirts. Oh, the things I wish I could put on my body.What is it that I meanwhen I say “wake”? Turn-tossedso often in the moon’s jaws thatopening up now to the block-stone,all the windows thrown ajar, I noticethat the light gets earlier with each waking with love for drapes.

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Eyes OpenMatt Morriss

~~ Eyes open. The world rushes toward me and then past. My ears are humming. Rubber grinds away on asphalt; black on black.

~~ Eyes closed. I am awake but not aware of my surroundings. The seat vibrating slightly, and my left cheek feels cold. A slight rattle can be felt all the way through to my teeth.

~~ Eyes open. The horn of the passing truck startles me, but not as much as the wind buffeting the car in its wake. We moved from side to side, swerving. When was I last awake? A few minutes or a hundred miles? Peeling my cheek off the window, I look out at the Great Plains. The same place as I was before, I close my eyes—nothing new here.

~~ My eyes jump open, startled by the sudden quiet. No more road noise, no more vibrations. Air brakes hiss to my right. The click of a gas pump: All I hear.

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A mini-mart, the god-foresaken Walmarts in the highway solar system. Candy, cokes, and reheated chinese-manufactured meats are shoved in my face. A bathroom I don’t want to think about. A counter as greasy as my feet. A few coins exchange hands, silently and without thought. Triumph! A York Peppermint Patty in hand; the only candy worth buying. Strapped into my deer blind, my nose filled with mint; I observe other patrons of the gas station. It seems that gas stations either collect strange people or are perhaps an insight into the “average American.” I certainly don’t encounter these people every day. A few miles down the road. Something remarkable. A cow! Not the first and not the last. It’s brown speckled coat blends in the green fields behind. Little to stay awake for…

~~ Eyes closed. Aware but not awake. A thought: Are we there yet?

~~ What was that? Something changed, my head tips forward, my eyes opening. Someone turned down the volume on the road noise. Trees are less blurred than normal. Cars trickle by, heading the other way. The road looks strangely empty.

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I blink. The flashing lights attract my attention. Red and yellow blinking against the matte blue sky. A semi-truck carrying gasoline tossed on its side. It was, for a short while, the plaything of giants.

The accident didn’t even spill into our lane of traffic, but the need to slow and see what had just transpired did. Drivers ahead and behind look towards the flashing lights; their necks turned to rubber.

Surreal. No sounds of sirens or the crash. Only a shadow of the action that took place. Traffic clears. Our car moves on; the accident is gone. Was the driver injured? What happened? I wonder… A moment’s interesting details are soon lost to the past. Darkness gathers at the side of my vision, tunneled against the same fields of green corn and brown cows. The sound is back. Tires against blacktop. A low hum of vibrations; my cheek is cold against the window. I think no more. Eyes Closed.

~~ Eyes open—again. The scene has changed. Maybe even the first act is over and the intermission has finished. Lights have dimmed and returned to their former brightness.

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A new day. A new view. Mountains push the fields and puffy clouds aside. On the globe, the fields curve away behind me. Ahead the world ends in craggy, snow-covered peaks. Eyes open wide – this is worth staying awake for.

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Christmas in SpaceJoshua Tacke

It is Christmas morning. We are eating dehydrated Vegetables out of toothpaste tubes And it tastes like sand being poured down my throat.

Though

This is true for everyone, we are really,Truly, dining in the courts of the divine.

Irene grabs the handle barsAround the airlock and presses her sloping noseAgainst the glass, her nostrils splayed like an amphibious 8th grade test subject.

“I would kill for some gravy right now,” she says.

Ivan nods, wiping space-ketchupFrom the outer fringe of his swooping red mustache(which we lovingly call the burning bush) with his

pocketHandkerchief. He is finished and ejects it into zero-

gravity.

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I watch it hover, suspended in place like the hand puppet

I bought for my ventriloquist brother last Christmas,Which he pretended to like and now uses as a paper

weight,Its vertically striped stockings hanging off the edge

of his mahogany desk,

Contemplating death.

We forgot to bring a Christmas tree, so we draw straws

To see who is going to suit up and scour the moon for something equivalent,

A golden calf erected for the sake of tradition. I lose and descend

Upon the moon, my weightless boots announcing my arrival with an anti-climatic

Marshmallow poof of dust. I summon every remaining drop of imagination and

Pogo across the salty desert, believing myself to beAn astro-Michael Jordan: If a sideline reporter asks me why I am moving like

molasses, I tell them, “Because it is only fair to the

others,”

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As I throw down an equilibrium-shattering tomahawk jam

To a wordless chorus of applause. Thank you Thank you Thank you You are all far too kind. The basketball hoop in my parent’s driveway,

weighed down by sandbagsAnd always craning its neck to the left: a misinformed

Christmas gift they gave to my brother, Who was actually into theatre. My sister Peggy, now,

she loved basketballTo the point where she would get up, lace up, and

drill free throws before school:Her Gary Payton jersey a suit of armor beneath her

plain, gray hoodie.

She now works at the bank.

Crunching numbers,She is newly divorced; caughtIn bed with the gardener by her seven year old,Ava.

Unleashing a familial fire storm straight from the mouth of Hades,

She is awake.

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I look up at our precious spacecraft and imagine itbeing struck

By a bull-headed asteroid, its pasty surfaceblossoming

Into a ripe, blazing ball of fire the color of mango flesh,

Irene, Ivan, and our flight-computer Junior:

All entirely consumed in our very own starry-eyed passion play.

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Bugs in my BrainJessica Shatkin

I think I don’t want to think about this anymore. My obsession that I pretend is love Eats all my thoughts. His image My image of him Is a living creature thatLaid eggs in my brain. Beneath my hairy skull they hatched. Little maggots feed on the distractions I work so hard to engage.

I forget (the worms) A sunny weekend, and laughter engulfs me. This sun, this laughter Is powerful stuff. It carries me through thursday on a frothy wave.

But This wave is NOT electromagnetic, Does NOT go on for light-years. This wave, this joy of forgetting

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Is like a wave at the beach. Ride it ‘til it breaks.

It breaks. The nasty maggots eat my brain-thoughts While I am conscious. I want to claw them out, scream. They are him. The same images same memories. They eat and grow fat. “Get out of my head!” I yearn to say to him. But, he is NOT in my head, he did NOT plant those hungry maggots.

I did.

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Sleeping TogetherJoshua Tacke

The wristwatch tied around the bedpost given as a Christmas gift clanged chck-chck-chck over hazy REM breaths pushed out like a cartoon thought bubble, drawn in with a straw. Dora slept on her back. Mattress baron. Departed. Cold crept in and zipped Michel in a strait jacket: The open window. It is four o’ clock and getting out of bed declares defeat, nail in cof-fin. Tangled. Buried in pillow counting breaths and curs-ing god. Defeat is not cinematic, climatic, conclusive—it is an IV drip erosion of good sense; of table man-ners, of I’m good, how are you. Michel tosses, turns towards Dora, and opens his eyes: Her nose appears hooked, its birdbeak shadow hanging over the bed-room wall, over photos of children and their children, dressed in prom tuxedos, pee-wee football helmets, halloween fake fangs and a seventeenth birthday dinner sombrero. Michel is old and thick sun-silvered hair frays out of his chest and shoulders. Dora’s hair is still black and still long and swallows her pillow in whale gulps. Chck-chck-chck. He brings his head in close to hers, pausing. Wrinkles crisscross her cheek, the skin colored grey and pulled taught over high cheekbones.

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Michel sticks out his tongue, hones it into a fine point, and presses it into Dora’s closed heavy eyelid. He holds, rotating his tongue around the socket, tracing the eyeball. The air is thick, bloated. She does not stir.

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In—Dana Thompson

I need to be überhuman I need to beAre accomplishments like things I’m hoarding in my high-ceilinged bedroomExtra I need to bewith ticking clock and wheeling wooden clanking sun and moon?More than just a girl I need to beWill I burrow myself deep and hide myself awaySpecial I need to bein that which I am but will not always be?Full I need to beNo, I’m still, no, I’m—So many so many things all rolled into one.Hhhhhhhhhhhh

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Nick Michal

Had Too

It’s a hell of a time to be in the detecting business. I should know: I am one, and business sucks. And it’s not that it’s even the abstract good, crime is down, no one has been murdered on the North side in a month maloney. Even the dames who make it their business to get all hysterical for my businesses ain’t been playing the part. Or is it histrionics.

Anyway, so business sucks, right? And this dame comes in, right, and tells me to get on the trail of some dirty money she lost. I say okay, and ask where she lost it. In the gutter, she replies, while I was walking home, singing, AND DANCING, IN THE RAIN!

Fuck off. It was a joke. Those things that are supposed to make people laugh. That thing I don’t do much of anymore. That time that just won’t go away. Not that I’ve been sick; quite the opposite, really. I’ve just been so tired, the same in, out door jobs, and this job, this job that’s never supposed to feel like a job is one, its got heft too it, like I could swing it across a face and it would bring a body down, liberate some teeth too.

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Two? It would take more than that. My two eyes need four nights, or at least eight hours. A big sleep.

The bottom line, the best I did this month was bring a gun to a stick fight, finish off a case about a couple ladies and a pendant they all lost from their high school. About their high school. It was like playing a community college and thwacking them to get over the pain of losing to the Pirates.

All of which points out a lull, one which prodded me towards pulling out a phone book and finding Blondie’s number, maybe an address. Turns out the phone books are pretty useful. I was halfway through the number before my senses kicked in, the ones that made me a detective. The same ones that made me a coward.

I went to get a drink.

* * * * * *

“Dirk, I didn’t expect you here.”

“This early?” I managed a laugh at Joe, then turned it into a grin before he could split the difference.

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“At all. You usually only come by here when you can’t get your fingers through a case. And I know your hands’ve been empty the last couple weeks.”

“—Try longer.”

“Yeah, well the spirit’s the same, even if it don’t bleed no more. So what’ll it be.”

“Something that won’t take my mind off what it’s on. If it’ll keep my on the chair, that’s a bonus too.”

“All right, some kool-aid it is. It’s got those vitamins, too, good for you. About one of the only good things you’ll do for yourself.”

“Thanks gramps.” Joe was my half-brother. I should say, on account of my older sister that I never talk about. He had a high forehead and slicked back gray hair that looked like it had been packed in a box since the fifties. Along with all his other things: catcher’s mitt, transistor radio, boxing glo—

“Who you calling old, bub? Last I recall you were the one who needed four inch frames to read his overdue bills.” I should also mention that Joe shared my pension for being an asshole.

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“Oh, woe. If I weren’t feeling so particular I would surely die in my seat. Nah, I need help, Joe. You have things, words, that can help tease this thing out. It feels “

“—buoyant?”

“Love. No.”

“Tightening?”

“Anxiety. No.”

“Crushing?”

“Despair. No.”

“Liberating?”

“The words of self-industry, if I ever saw them! No.”

“Redundant?”

“Redundant. No.”

“Ah, happy?”

“Contentment. No.”

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“Contentment?”

“I’m a Cubs fan, so of course. No.”

“Tightening?”

“Erotic. No.”

“Geeez. All right, let me get out the melancholy folder.” As the conversation slipped so did we, making our way to a back room with a bright light. Joe’s was like a geode: a piece of shit that’s actually worth something. He produced a manila organ folder with as many divisions in it as ways off Division. It had heft to it, and was a worn brownish wad of papers, pages. I wondered how old it was. Who had fingered through it. Who else. I fingered through it, fingers brushing across the hair strands on the pictures of the pretty women. None of them matched. They were even pasted on the pages. I pushed my fingers across the pages, hoping to spark a flame. Nothing doing. Blondie was there, about the second half, about halfway through it. Her eyes had the same magnetism they did in real life. That’s a thing Blondie was good at: fooling the pictures into thinking they were static, fooling you into thinking she wasn’t.

She wrote me a letter two months ago. Her last one.

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* * * * * *

I ate at Joe’s, and then left. I let my cigarette lead me, and when it trailed off I did. Down a dark alley, past riverrun, past Joy and David’s, red-light, green green red light. The streets became a choose-your-own-adventure story and I skipped all of it to look at the publishing info. Turns out the ink was soy. How negative.

What followed has only been pieced together by me after-the-fact. A testament to my detecting skills, you can call it. You can call it whatever. I could’ve gotten Donohue to help me with it, but honestly the bastard would’ve dug in too far, and I knew he was working on a divorce case and was fine with the suffering he was already having. What better time to split:

dear you,

Some things you just can’t end.

Some things last a long time.

dear you you’re all just numbers numbers to find you

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numbers to navigate to find you numbers to know how to find you and what then? You don’t guess with a touch. Or maybe you do.

I love “Steppin’ Out” but can’t believe a guy like Joe Jackson did it. I could’a done that. Or at least just been him in the video have you seen that video? He looks like a roulette dealer.

I wonder what you’re doing I wonder what youre do-ing I wonder what you’re doing I waorneder wyhoaut ysoiun’grlee doing?

Harump

Life doesn’t end with a song.

That’s not what I mean.

A scene doesn’t fade when the music does But don’t let that fool you If what reaches you in those parts isn’t a song I’ll be the heartless bastard that lets the thought die with him And on that note

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My outro:

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The IceboxZoë Ballering

Two hundred years from now,in cool-aired houses, cool-skinned menwill remember women’s reign:moody, brooding days, bowed heads, the kitchen sheen, each fat dropfalling on the gravid belly.So the cycle goes: another pair of handsare made from this, enslaved for this—

and the men chuckle with the cool champagnepulled from beaded buckets, crisp striped ties,fat thighs pressed to rose tanned leather,laughing at the folly of the past age—when daughters grew through incubation, before the icebox mantra of emancipation,before the endless manhood of refrigeration.

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Out on Drift Creek Roadthe air is warm and closeso sweetit makes me dizzy, my nose is too full of leftover rainpermeating the pavement andthe fields of dank, fecund soilholding the promise of growth

On the side of the roadoutside SublimityOregonthe sway of my bodyas I run, gallop, lope, hoping that next time aroundI’ll have the glory

The sinew and ligaments like the fibers of oak rootsdig and curve aroundknots of lactic acidburning away the chaffburning away,on Drift Creek Roadat first light

Glory DaysErin Kranzig

Thanksquarterlife would like to thank the Associated Stu-dents of Whitman College (ASWC) for their financial support, without which the production of this magazine would not be possible.

Our utmost gratitude goes to John Sasser with Integrity Design, The Whitman College Pioneer, blue moon, and our advisor Professor Gaurav Majumdar.

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