Helvetica was created in 1957 to be a neutral font; what is deemed
unfit to print is anything but neutral.
quarterlife
4 Issue 2 unfit to print Volume
december 2009 co-editors Jenna Mukuno quarterlife is a literary journal published four Anastasia Zamkinos times a year that features poetry, short fiction, public relations Amy Liechty
drama, creative nonfiction, analytic essays, alternative journalism, and any other sort of written work Whiman 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.
layout editors Glory Bushey Molly Esteve quarterlife is an exercise in creative subjectivity, a Anastasia Zamkinos celebration of the conceptual diversity of Whitman copy editors Madeline Jacobson Mimi Pysno staff Julianne Ballou Michael Bell Ari Frink Joanna Swan Paris White staff artist Joanna Swan
writers when presented with a single theme. Each quarterlife theme acts as the proverbial elephant in the room, fragmented by individual perception: each portion is ostensibly unconnected 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.
whitman.edu/quarterlife
Letter from the Editors As in any good creative work, there is some tension in the very enterprise of printing an “unfit to print� themed issue. In some ways, the pieces that are printed here are actually the least unfit. What we have compiled here are what we felt were the most fit to print, yes, but they remain anything but neutral. These pieces each challenge the status quo, and each does so in such a way that exploits the very structures within which writing is, perhaps inevitably, confined. Given this particular interest in challenging neutrality, we have printed this issue in the controversial yet ubiquitous font Helvetica. You might recognize the font from store logos, governmental forms, or even as the default font on your word processor if you’re a Mac user; font aficionados recognize it as a very Modernist font: straight lines, no frills, undecorous. Helvetica is celebrated by some as the perfect font for its neutrality; others condemn it for the same reason, arguing that fonts should make a statement. Irregardless of personal opinions about the font, it is clear that Helvetica, intended to be a starkly neutral font, is now anything but neutral. Some might even call it unfit to print.
Contents 06 11 12 16 20 22 25 28 30 33 37 39
cover
Body of Literature Nude Eve Borrow a heart Title here Core Paper #1
ZoĂŤ Ballering Anonymous Anastasia Zamkinos Amelia Rose Singer Lauren Beebe Mehera Nori, Ted Sengpaseuth, Seth Dawson Happy Hurts Jasper Lipton Ink Joe Cross Disemvoweled Ari Frink social science Jenna Mukuno Oranges Anonymous Minor Adjustments Tyler King
Beginnings linoleum print
Mimi Pysno
Zoë Ballering
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Body of Literature
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At the age of sixteen, my albino grandmother drove to Kenosha for her first tattoo. In rebellion against her rabidly Lutheran parents, she had a Stendhal quote etched onto her armpit, a place hidden from her mother’s prudish eyes, her father’s temper. She found this quote in the margins of a library book: “God’s only excuse is that he does not exist.” The pain was excruciating, but when she said grace at dinner, entered church and tasted the wafer and the wine, sang hymns, and fed the homeless, she shivered with delight. She went to Kenosha every weekend after that, claimed she was visiting friends. By the time she enrolled at the University of WisconsinParkside, her butt, thighs, back, and stomach were covered. She wore sweatpants and sweatshirts. Her mother praised her for her modesty. Her father bragged to his friends that his daughter
Ballering unfit to print
was a virgin. No one suspected that words were crawling underneath her clothes, not just Stendhal’s declaration of atheism, but Karl Marx, Groucho Marx, physicists, philosophers, and other marginalia— everyone was speaking on her body. Then, something strange happened. She was tattooed with words being spoken at that very moment. They weren’t particularly monumental words: “Jimmy, get the coat.” Soon, she was being tattooed with words that would not exist for days, weeks, months— even years. Where before a few lines had been added every week, now she had pages and pages of ordinary text curling up her arms and legs: “The butter is rancid; why can’t you remember to put it away?” “Math sucks,” “Italy’s tramway system is very efficient.” Having run out of space on the hidden parts of her body, she had words tattooed in tendrils across her palms and forehead. Three weeks later, the canvas of her skin even more complete, she returned home for Thanksgiving. Her father
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spilled cranberry sauce down his shirt, her mother dropped the turkey, and the dog was too stunned to lick the floor. In this moment of literal collapse, my grandmother felt a rising up. Her secret was not a secret anymore. There was no longer a reason for baggy clothes. She decided to live nakedly; her tattoos, she reasoned, were clothing enough. She was so pale, the words so vivid, that she disappeared. The first time this happened, she was helping a friend move furniture to a new apartment. My grandmother stood in front of a blank refrigerator— no magnets, no pictures— and her friend could not find her. All that was visible was the shifting of words, phrases, quotes, passages, movie scripts, jingles, lyrics, grocery lists, insults, adages, and poetry. She could not be seen against white walls, picket fences, or clean sheets. Several lovers momentarily feared that she had sloughed the ink off her body and walked away; really, she was spread-eagled in bed. By now, my grandmother was no longer a
Ballering unfit to print
human being. She was a collection of language, a body of literature— words appeared and disappeared, swirled across her stomach, dripped in straight lines down her shoulder blades, began on her fingernails and ended on her toenails, streamed out of her bellybutton, and pricked at her nipples. The whites of her eyes were like a teleprompter. Sentences sprouted from her head instead of hair. Upon sitting down to read this diminutive collection, you may have perceived a strange skittering of shadows on the wall. As a rational being, you likely attributed this to the way sunlight filters through tree branches and window blinds. Perhaps, for an instant, you thought these shadows looked like words. Sometimes, we read things in spider webs, spilled salt, flower arrangements, and fallen leaves that cannot possibly be there. We know this. Our brains correct. I am not bone-white or violet-eyed. I do not carry the albino gene. Instead, I am the liaison between a body of literature and a pigmented
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world. My grandmother has snuck inside, pressed herself against the wall, walked forward. You are reading her forearm at this moment, held steady above a sheet of paper. I attach my name to her shifting body— the rest has been written, is being written, will be written spoken sung listed screamed recited— perhaps by me, perhaps by someone worlds apart, language unified on her ghostly flesh.
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Anonymous
Nude
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Anastasia Zamkinos
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Eve
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We drifting in horse latitudes slow moving slow slow slouching on the long mast, sail slack compass needles stagnant still hear the soft threat of old wood around rusting nails, cracked figurehead pulling its face apart as the wood overdries from understimulation, And we feel time growing heavy,
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We have no more to throw overboard to lessen the weight. Our dishes: gone. Wine, separating into deeper mirrors on the sea’s face. Beds,
Zamkinos
laying the hair flat on our forearms and pulling us down our ship down toward depths distant, down in the deep sleep of lunar tug and pull, ebb and flow, where we are moved only by the bump of a sleeping fish adrift in the current or the deep sonar mumble of a whale deep in her nightmares, rolling slow and sighing deeply, sound only slipping through to stir our ship and change its course in the wet sand that drifts in flurries.
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hacked to pieces and soaking in the water; clothes, stripped from our backs, layers of skin drying and the flakes falling down to the deck in the total absence of a breeze
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We have nothing more to give, no choice but to let our ship drown and to become the softest red crabs at the bottom of the sea, unpresuming, pinching each others’ wrists, hair, with gnarled knuckles like pincers, surrounded by our things cracked mirrors soaked papers with wine stains, puzzle pieces, and socks, small pieces of kitchen and bedside table, assorted flotsam to portentously mark the site.
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Yes, we will have been here. Here we will be.
Zamkinos
None will look for this ship, will discern our fresher bones, once our skins have been shed and ribs used as clown fish playgrounds, from the jaw of a horse from a hundred years ago. There will be no one to witness, no one to drive the boat through these waters, our story. No one will hear our nightmare songs; none but us will even know we have been here But us-Kelp will stretch to the surface from deep behind our eye sockets, Bottom feeders will be full-bellied from the flesh of our forearms, Snails will trade shells in our waving hair.
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Amelia Rose Singer
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Borrow a heart
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This is what mama said: mama said, God puts everyone together. He gives them a heart, and ears, and legs and all of the insides and the outsides. She says when you die, you just die with that. Can’t give your insides to nobody else, cus God gave it just for you. Only thing is, God somehow put an accidental bad heart in me. I don’t mean bad like I’m evil or nothin like that, I mean bad like I’m not strong enough cus it’s too small. If you seen my brother Tommy run and me run too you’d be sad cus he’s litteler than me but he run faster. We have races through the fields from one spot to another and he always win. My heart just makes me breathe so heavy and it cant pump like Tommy’s can. When I get to those pearly gates of heaven if I get there (papa does a lot of questioning of it cus I do mean things to Tommy) will they
Singer unfit to print
say, WHO THE HECK ARE YOU?! THAT AIN’T YOUR HEART. YOU LOOK LIKE YOU DAVEY, BUT YOU DON’T GOT HIS HEART. Because God put in me a heart and here I will be returning with a different one. That’s like if I went to school in one pair of shoes that mama sent me in and came back in another pair, I would be mad if I was mama or God. Maybe I’m ezagagaten a little bit. I don’t think they yell in heaven. Mama always says, “whisper like they do in heaven” when Tommy and I is inside and loud. But I don’t think they’d do no whisperin in heaven if I showed up all patched together. I think they gonna yell at me just like I said. But oh I want a heart and I think I know the reasons why I don’t got one, the ones I been told and the ones I thought up. It’s a very complurcated thing to get a heart. I seen tin man get a heart in that movie and I tell you what he made it look easy. He just pop it right in. But what’s what is that he ain’t a person like me. I think the real problem is mama and all her
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thinkin that I cant have no other heart but this one that God gave me. I think sometimes God gets busy and makes a mistake. Like the other day mama burnt all the cookies she was bakin but we had to eat them anyways. God wasn’t up for wastin me just cus I got one thing bad. Sure I want not burnt cookies even if those not burnt cookies and me with a better heart is better some people might say. Mama is up to thinkin that if she just pray and pray God gonna help me out. I’m not mad at God, he made a mistake I guess, but I think we can fix it if somebody else wants to let me borrow their heart. I won Tommy’s heart in a bet one time, but the doctor said I couldn’t really just take it outta Tommy. I think I wanna let mama know that it’s ok if I borrow a heart, cus maybe God is lookin out and seein, oh, Davey need to borrow that heart that’s all. And then they let in the person missin a heart to an extra nice spot in heaven cus they was so nice. Only, I don’t think I can tell mama all this cus
Singer
she wants just me and just the heart I have now, even if it’s messed up. I think don’t tell mama that I write all these thoughts, don’t tell nobody at all cus it’s just silly for me to get a heart that ain’t from God.
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Lauren Beebe
Title here I want to write tonight about… dog still barking out ther. what would they like? I mean the reader. last night’s dream, perhaps— get to it then: I wantto tell you, reader, about… damn. lost. about: a bout—of tiny nightmares!
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what I’m trying to say is the heat of eyeballs— I mean the slip of sleepingtongue. cool fluids? cool juices, yes.
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I’d like to say something meanningful about my mother; the two of us floating near the ceiling punching keys—CHING-click, click
Beebe
(take note: give her a call tomorrow… hmm, today). cold! standing naked over desk at 2:13 writing. make it quick— get it down, out, OUT! prikling of pubic hair, goosification of skin; the BODY: yes, write what you know! internal revision. what a waste. be tired enough to sleep, now. bed: crumbs of fingerskin and smell of unwashed backs under there. warm body. his face wrinkling in the lightglow. sorry about all this.
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what have I said? I haven’t told the first thought that got me up. how can I say this now? after all thats come between us. because I certainly don’t mean to offend— I simply want to overstep my bounds. now come here please. let me put my arms around you.
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Mehera Nori, Ted Sengpaseuth, Seth Dawson
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Core Paper #1
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Mehera Nori, Ted Sengpaseuth, Seth Dawson Encounters/Core The Odyssey Core Paper #1 Since the beginning of time, men have embarked on journeys.1 To the Ancient Mayans, journeys were considered a gift from the gods. But what is a journey? A journey is many things (see figure 1). But what does that mean? According to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, a journey is “an act or instance of traveling from one place to another,” or “something suggesting travel or passage from one place to another.”2 Some notable people who have embarked on journeys are Jesus, Forrest Gump, and Helen Keller. Perhaps the most notable person of them all is the famous 1 Sir Edmund Hillary, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Elton John, et. al. 2 Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary
Figure 1.
Nori/ Sengpaseuth/ Dawson
Odysseus of The Odyssey. In fact, the modern day term “odyssey� comes from Odysseus, and implies peril and danger during a journey. This is not just a coincidence; in fact, the world is full of peril and danger (see figure 2).
Figure 2.
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Journeys and life are similar, but very different too, as demonstrated in The Odyssey. The journeys in The Odyssey are journeys that people embark on in the real world. As a famous philosopher once said, “Life is a journey, not a race.”3 Also, Confucius said, “It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.”4 Odysseus encountered lots of peril and danger on his journey but he did not stop until he returned home to his beloved wife Penelope. The story of Odysseus shows us the importance of going on a journey when the destination is really important. Journeys are all about where you end up at. In conclusion, I still like journeys.
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3 Ted Sengpaseuth 4 Confucius
Jasper Lipton
Happy Hurts I breathe my silent revolt into crisp autumn air as old Tiresius shakes his head in time to my smoke signals. He is stooped now, the husk of a man. Though the white globes in his head stare deadfast at the sky, No longer do they see what my ice-blue orbs have hurt. “What did you tell her?” He asks me, hand gripping his thigh. “What I tell them all,” I smirk, eyeing gold leaves in dirt. No nod of assent, no searching stare from opaque eye, only dust and dust, say the leaves on yellow-gold dirt. unfit to print
We have passed the picnic tables, Grecian in repose; unrealer now that the noonday sun has risen high in hypocrite light, when darkness, smiling, sheds its clothes.
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“Oaths have been broken,” intones the ancient, wizened bat. “And what would you have me do, O He Who Watches All?” He has no reply, only mystic mumbled dooms and “Venom from gilded fangs” and lovely, white, opaque eyes. What purpose does age serve, when youth is young and alive? “I’ll pluck my own apples!” Laughs my crowd of opaque I’s;
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We are too old for him, we see what the blind cannot. “A lie for an apple is nothing more than a lie!” Truth for both, though neither can see what the other got.
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His head is a tomb, where mine a bloody battlefield; splendor and romance, but no sorry death when I die. Every bite is a conquest, my weapon and my shield; Juice drips from a thousand swords, stains sticky
Lipton
hands and feet, pounded into mud in the same rich dirt where we kneeled; happy hurts in furious bursts when blood is what I eat. “Well, what will you tell my daughter?” He is scared, I know. Vicious brute! scream old white eyes; so ruined, so naïve. I burble, laughing gaily, my bright blue eyes aglow: “You know the words— better than me or any other— She’ll hear what we tell them all, and while she’s on her knees, you’ll know that I told her just what you told our mother.”
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Joe Cross
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Ink
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photopolymer & lead type print
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Ari Frink
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Disemvoweled
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Slowly but surely, my lower-case vowels are disappearing from my handwriting. Oh, not from my speech or type, They are purely the pencil and pen type vowels, and none of those boisterous, proud uppercase letters show any signs of deteriorating, but if you look closely, the torsos of my i’s are shrinking, so that they now look like colons, My e’s are gnawing their own jaws off, becoming c’s in the process, likewise, my a’s, o’s and u’s are showing similar signs of leaving, their bodies folding in, and then out. (y’s, unsurprisingly, have yet to begin the precipitous decline into obsolescence)
There are many competing explanations out there: Frink
- it’s pure evolutionary necessity for vowels to disappear, like pinkies or gingko trees, they’ve lost the ability to function in the natural world. - in this globalized economy, countries are cutting the vowels out of their words, Saving time and paper, shipping vowels overseas, and my hand is only the next in line to feel the effects. My favorite explanation, Points to a certain antsyness on the vowels’ part:
Perhaps my vowels were the first to catch wind of this, Pack up their little suitcases,
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- current philosophical discourse emphasizes the futility of language, Our inability to express the painful and unfathomable through mere words.
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And edge their way out the door. What repercussions will this have? I’m sure I can function pretty well without vowels, “onomatopoeia” will become “nmtp” but other than that, I’ll manage...
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Someday, I’ll tell this tale to my tucked-in children, A story with intrigue, mystery and a moral: “Cherish your vowels while you have them— you never know when they’ll leave you.”
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Jenna Mukuno
social science
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social science: primarily, the generic name that the education system utilizes as an umbrella term for the study of history. Often used today in secondary schools to sound more serious or academic when said aloud or typed on a grade report. More obscurely, the term can illustrate the underlying forces and laws of attraction that electrify the relationship between student and teacher, student and professor, student and mentor, et. all. Furthermore, the area of study for one Brandon Dell’Orto, a young, married, and handsome teacher (see index for father figure) at Granite Bay High School in Granite Bay, California. Dell’Orto was introduced to the often called “mature” sixteen year-old sophomore named Jenna Mukuno in the fall of 2004. Social science was the manner in which an impressionable (yet mature) young lady developed
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an inner sense of flirtation and coquetry with an older man; all done expertly. The divine cues of approval. The red, love-strung pen marks. The subtle namedrop of the dark horse candidate from 1828 that dipped into conversation. The scissor-pang of infidelity when he treated all men equally in her class as if he were constitutionally bound. The mutiny. Her feelings contained by the cool, logical helmet of a growing academic.
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History (the more colloquial term) made it abundantly clear nothing would come to pass between the two (see La Tourneau in index for rare exception). Mukuno both knew this to be true, and strived to keep it this way. She wasn’t that rebellious. Every day class would end; each student would pass through his doorway, shaking his hand, while a tiny powder keg erupted in Mukuno’s heart. She dreamed of nothing beyond a luxurious hug. Social science can also describe a subgroup or subculture of the student population
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that decide the only way to get close to a teacher outside of class without a liability is to offer babysitting jobs to the desired. Mukuno undertook such action in the spring of 2005 when she was called into his room during her Calculus class for an emergency. The crisis: to answer whether or not she was available Friday night— for childcare purposes. Mukuno took the offer as an opportunity to see Mr. Dell’Orto in his domestic environment: his children, the wife, the pool in the backyard, the book shelves, the bedroom. These adventures into his private sphere granted her membership into a very select group of students who have wiped the poop from an infant’s backside containing half the DNA of her beloved. History also endowed Mukuno with her awareness of boundaries. Deep down, all she wanted to know was how such an intelligent, thoughtful, and wise individual as Dell’Orto lived in his daily life. She wanted to know how he faced present reality when his studies led him to uncover the greatest atrocities of humankind—war, poverty,
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suffering, injustice, betrayal, silence. It was an innocent attraction that sent students (not exclusively Mukuno) wildly off to the library to memorize Taft’s favorite dessert cheese. He knew his power. Students also knew he knew his power. The narcissism.
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Anonymous
Oranges
I reached out and when my fingers touched the back of his hand the skin stuck to arches of my fingerprints and made soft veiny noises like an orange slice-sticky sweet and juicy and drippy and thick-sticky like honey
as we hold hands his skin loosens, comes off, until
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a vein in his left wrist pulsed and I wrapped it around my smallest finger and tugged and watched it briefly tug his heart to the left.
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he is bare muscles showing bits of glistening bone his fingernails already behind us in the ground
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the sun heats his corporeal stickiness and I part his muscles and crawl into his forearm slip into his calf where I am sure his pulsing veins, thick from climbing mountains, traversing miles, will push me up beat by beat back up into his thigh where
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I will incubate intimate and someday burst out honeythickstickywith placenta and something like sacrifice.
Tyler King
Minor Adjustments Dear Mr. Kennan,
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In regards to your most recent submission, I would first like to say that although a few slight changes must be made, the piece is something I will gladly print. Its pace and style are captivating, and your way with words is unparalleled among the thousands of works that come across my desk every day. Those are my thoughts on how you have written this piece. The subject matter, on the other hand, is not something I would dare print on any page. Therefore, I suggest that any mention of certain vulgar acts be replaced with family activities and every vulgar word/phrase be replaced with language one might use when conversing with a respected colleague. The simpler course of action would be to completely remove these elements,
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which would leave the piece as follows: I am fond of Marie. Respectfully yours,
Jack P aulson
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Jack Paulson Head of Publishing and Editorial Services Great Horned Owl Publishing, Inc.
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Thanks
quarterlife would like to thank the Associated Students 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, our advisor Professor Gaurav Majumdar, and our web designer, Kim Hooyboer. All work featured in quarterlife magazine or on the website is displayed by express permission of the author or artist, who holds all relevant copyrights to her or his work.
This magazine has been printed on paper from 100% post-consumer waste.