quarterlife is:
new in town
editors-in-chief
heleana backus
anna johnston
copy editors
editor: natalie flaherty
victoria helmer
hanna lynch
public relations
editor: bridget o'brien
iris thwaits
lan moore
marleigh anderson
art
editor: sylvie corwin
chloe french
elie flanagan
antara bird
ally kim
audrey mace
web development
editor: hannah marker
beth kutina
livvy eickerman
devi payne
mei smith
volume 15 issue 3
Spring 2021
quarterlife is a literary journal published four times a year that features poetry, short fiction, drama, creative nonfiction, analytic essays, alternative journalism, and any other sort of written work Whitman students might create, as well as sketches, drawings, cartoons, and prints. 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 conceptual diversity of Whitman students when presented with a single theme. Each piece is ostensibly unconnected but ultimately relevant to the whole. Every work 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.
quarterlife is back in town!
Howdy,
After fifteen years on Whitman’s campus, quarterlife is pleased to announce that she is back in town. On the weekends, she likes to relax by sunbathing, watching baby ducklings, and reading Western novels. Her major is still undecided and, in fact, changes quarterly. She makes her way onto your Instagram feed and is somehow always reading at open mics. Maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s the hard work of many, many lovely people.
quarterlife missed snuggling into racks at Reid Campus Center and in Penrose Library. She missed watching Whitman students slackline and strap into hammocks on Ankeny. As these favorite pastimes return, quarterlife feels renewed and ready to show you around town. In this issue, follow her to Pike Place Market, maybe Piggly Wiggly’s too, back in time to California circa 1853, to Walla Walla, to rainy England, to Wyoming, where the fences are drumsticks and the highways are gravy, to the hard-knock world of Pissin’ Jimmy.
Wherever you find yourself, quarterlife is here to take you by the hand and lead you into the sunset. She’ll promise to write, but you know she won’t. Rest assured, she’ll be gone in the morning, off to reinvent herself time and time again.
Bon voyage,
Anna & Heleana
contents
Click titles to jump straight to each submission!
samuel allen
marharyta tkachenka
anonymous
kasey moulton
janice kim
mckenna williams
hanna lynch
tricia ferrer
sam dale-gau
janice kim
dana walden
victoria helmer
connor walker
beth kutina
Alchemy
samuel allen
It’s arrival day, and my hands are in the dirt. I’m admonishing the packed clay with a shovel and a pick, clawing away grass and sod and plastic. I am uncovering a buried treasure of construction debris: broken bricks, nails and bolts, packing peanuts.
My neighbors come by, one bringing a peach cobbler. (Delicious.) They seem surprised. In the moment, I think it's because I’m coated in earth; later, I will learn that none of them do their own yardwork. Another difference between us.
I run to the garden store with my bag of change. The cashier helps me count it out on the counter, next to the lucky bamboo and succulents. She lends me a cart and a smile, and suddenly I am pushing downhill against the brilliant heat. I have what I need: a hole, a shovel, a handful of compost and a fistful of seeds, a coastal strawberry and a rosemary bush, roots, leaves, and aspirations all twined together into art, chemistry, creation, a family born into the soil.
We’re going to get along fine.
What the Cycle
marharyta tkachenka
The Midnight Rider
anonymous
The midnight rider
writes all day
so I guess he’s an all-day writer.
but he rides at midnight
to I don’t know where
to then write all the next day
He must get more ink
more pencils or pens
for writing all day’d
use them up
He must live alone
or far from a town
or maybe that’s
not true at all
He’s writing all day
and night is his break
so he rides
so he writes
while it’s day.
He could stock up
so he has supply
for more than just
the next day
but still he needs food-
though same thing applies
and yet we know not
why he rides.
Incoming Shift
kasey moulton
i don't know what home looks like
beyond these walls.
but maybe,
someday,
i'll know more than just
the sorority girls walking
outside my window,
and skateboards on the sidewalk
too close to midnight.
home will be broader than this box—
more presence
than place of residence.
new to the park in town
janice kim
mckenna williams
It is raining in High Wycombe, England. Pregnant droplets collect on Ilja’s window. She clears her throat. It is 2:04 there, but the dark night-morning sky is split like an eggshell by thunder. Nothing hatches. In the background: a door opening, a chuckle cut in half. Ilja’s lover? A drawer opens. The rain continues to fall long after I have closed this window and opened a new one.
The sun is either rising or setting in Sunrise Ranch, Arizona. A bird flits by Nate and Kaety’s window, then immediately reverses course. I think of the house I lived in last semester, how birds would constantly accelerate into the kitchen window with a resounding thunk. The kitchen ceiling was painted to look like a blue sky. Maybe the birds wanted to believe in this indoor sky. Or maybe—almost certainly—I’m giving them too much credit.
The sun has already set in Walla Walla, Washington. The snowmelt sliding down my dorm room window drips in staccato unison with my percolating coffee. Every now and then a clump of snow sloughs off the roof, hurling itself against the side of the building on its way down. I am startled every time. Every time I whirl around as if to ask, “Did you see that too?” But I am the only one in the room.
Shoes on Telephone Lines
hanna lynch
Tethered testimony to a short-lived presence here,
I wonder whether they may have belonged to you.
Hovering above; painfully, powerlessly near.
Too close, too far; my only memory, this shoe.
And as I look on, the frayed laces let the breeze through
But the knots on the electric lines dutifully adhere,
Only switching, swaying; but never thrown askew.
But how I wish they would fall
Even though they would be merely in lieu
Of the entirety of you.
It pains me that I cannot reach the telephone lines tall
Even though they do not look like your shoes at all.
Still, I cannot keep walking by
Halfheartedly regarding those shoes in the sky
Because all I can think of is whether
I could follow them to the end,
If your shoes to some distant telephone line tether
To follow, to find; each loose knot to amend.
Do you walk some uncharted paths far away?
Soles held aloft, unable to track.
Do the lines that hold them bend and sway?
I wonder if their laces will ever go slack.
So I may follow the telephone lines all the way,
Looking above, against the clouds to bushwhack,
Hoping that my nomadic tendency will not lead astray
And I may hand your weathered shoes back.
A Normal Drive Through Wyoming
tricia ferrer
I don't know who likes to live in Wyoming,
who enjoys the dull, empty landscape
and scattered fences, the lifeless lakes,
the dreary houses, the falling hay.
This highway stretches beyond my vision,
the drive dragging me for hours and hours and hours.
Drive, Father, drive!
Escape the endless stretches of Wyoming
before the dullness kills us all!
I've stopped counting fences,
tired of the once-golden hay,
now bleak as the faded highway.
Is that horizon or highway stone?
As we drive along, slowly, painstakingly,
Wyoming becomes a twilight zone:
A dull, escape-less, landscape,
and we've been fenced in
with only chips and hay for food,
but the hay is stale and the chips flavorless.
The grey highway cement, tinted
with old tires of old drivers
skidding through Wyoming
dulls my senses…is it me,
or do the fences look like drumsticks?
Crunchy, chicken leg fences,
hearty hashbrown hay,
gravy grey highway,
driver, driver! Does anything exist in
Wyoming? Or must I conjure
luscious meals from dull objects,
dripping of abject tastelessness only a dulled tongue
could think of devouring? Flavored fence
and wholesome hay may manifest
on this cursed highway,
but Father, driver, deliver us
from this hell we call Wyoming.
I pray, save us from the dull highway!
Turn the fences and hay to fishes and loaves,
Drive us, deliver us from this hell we call Wyoming.
Hammer Hank meets the Pissin' Pistol
sam dale-gau
The first drop of liquid that hit the shot glass was dark brown. Cheap rotgut whiskey. “No, I meant the expression,” said the man.
Barkeep looked at the man. Kept looking. Then he looked past the man. Wasn’t much else to look at. Empty stools, tables, the old swinging doors that let in slices of sun above, below, and, well, through them too. Good old doors. Had cost more than a pretty penny, but were well worth it. A hanging bell couldn’t hold a candle to those trusty slats. The only other thing to look at were two men and a woman letting out smoke and throwing down cards in a corner. Barkeep looked back at the man.
“‘I don’t tell you how to eat your camel,’” the man repeated. “You ain’t never heard that before?” The man was Hank Henried. In towns farther south he might’ve been known as “Hammer” Hank Henried, back when he toppled small banks with his kid brother -- though his kid brother did most of the toppling. Little old ladies knew the name “Steel” Sal Henreid two counties down. Though whether the pronunciation was “Steel” or “Steal”, wasn’t really known. Hank wasn’t old, but he hadn’t taken to slinging iron since his topplin’ duo had been forcefully converted to a solo act by a single deadly bullet. With any luck, today could turn into a reprise of those old days.
The bartender was stonewalling him.
He tried to stonewall back. The bartender looked like he had three mustaches on his face, one above the mouth, and one above each of his eyes, all gray and bushy. None of the mustaches moved a hair. “Fine,” Hank said. “Forget the cheese, just bring me the goddamn beans.” The bartender shuffled away.
Hank turned around, miffed and a little pissed off. He put his elbows on the bar behind him in about the same place they were a moment ago, now with the hands on the other ends. There were three locals playing poker in the corner. A lean man with a tan hat, a leaner man in suspenders who looked like he probably had more hairs left on his teeth than on top of his head--the dealer-- and a hunching woman chewing her toothless jaw and smoking more than the men put together. Maybe one of them could tell him where he could find his rival.
Hank jangled up to the table. The dealer gave him a look a rabbit would give, and Hank didn’t know if there was anything going on between his ears. He sat down. Cards were put in front of him, and he threw some coins and cash to the hungry middle of the table. None of them were playing with chips, the closest poker chips were probably two counties over. They played a couple hands without sharing words. Clumps of money came and went, generally Hank was up and the tan hat man was down. At one point Barkeep brought Hank his beans on a plate that couldn’t really handle their sloshing. There were bowls in the bar, yes, but Barkeep thought a plate might suit this man better. They played.
They played and they drank. Hank scraped the plate clean with a dented spoon. Whiskey was about the only thing in the saloon, and Barkeep kept it coming. Again, the big woman drank more than the men. She had a bigger side arm than Hank did too, hanging loosely from her hip. Hank thought he could see little wisps of mustache above her lip, and was surprised she didn’t have a full beard. Eventually, when Hank’s relatively low supply of patience was overtaken by the pleasant buzzing developing in his head, he spoke up.
“Say,” he looked around the table from under his ample brow, “y’all ever heard of a dirty low-down cuss goes by the moniker o’ Pissin’ Jimmy?” He spat the word ‘Pissin’ over the gathered money on the table.
The gruff woman slammed her fist on the table. “Been lookin for that foul sonnovabitch myself, I have,” she said.
“Yeah?” said Hank, he turned his square shoulders toward her. “I’ve been tracking him for two counties. Killed my brother, he did. That sweet boy’d never hurt a fly. And he shot ‘em.” Hank choked up a little. “Didn’t even have a chance to grab his six irons.”
“Killed my husband, that cur,” said the woman. “Shot ‘im dead right there in the street, he did. Like he was some kinda goddamned dog.” Her prominent biceps began to tense and untense as she squeezed her shot glass.
Hank slapped the table, making the cards jump. “If I’d’a been there I would’a killed him on the spot.”
“Oh you’d better believe I woulda too,” said the woman. She began to fume. Her shot glass didn’t look like it could handle much more of her grip. At the other end of the room Barkeep got out a rag and started in on his countertop.
Hank stewed for a moment, then gathered his lips. “Fuck Pissin Jimmy,” he said. The woman slammed her shot glass against the table, then tossed it back. “Fuck Pissin Jimmy,” she agreed.
“I’d imagine he didn't choose that name for himself,” said the tan hat man. The tan brim sat low over his face.
The dealer looked side to side between the players with only his eyes, his body stock-still. Hank laughed shortly, downing his own whiskey. “No, partner, I’d imagine he did not.” The woman leaned into the table, addressing Hank. “Ah heard he drinks as much as seven men.”
Hank leaned in too. “Heard the first time he killed a man, he went and killed two more just cuz he found he liked it.”
The woman countered, raising a mischievous eyebrow. “Heard he got the name cuz he pisses on everybody he kills.”
Hank’s lips curled up. “Heard he got it cuz when he’s stalkin’ somebody through the desert, he’ll drink his own piss to catch up with ‘em quicker.”
“Ha! Well I heard he was seven feet tall!”
They both leaned back and drank another, chuckling slightly. Finally Tan Hat weighed in. “I heard he was about the same height as me.”
The woman let her chuckle reach its end, returning her glass to the table. Then she froze. Her eyes locked on Tan Hat. There was a ripe pause that filled the bar. Then she scrambled backwards, fingers tripping over leather reaching for her sidearm.
It was over before it happened.
There was an explosion under the table and the woman was splayed out on the ground, destroying the wooden chair under her. Suddenly Tan Hat was standing with a silver revolver in his hand that looked like a skeleton of a gun, its smoking boney finger grimly pointing at the cold woman on the floor.
“Shit!” yelled Hank, jumped from his seat, and ran through the swinging doors. Pissin Jimmy looked to the frozen dealer and Barkeep peeking out over the counter. “Any objections?”
Neither spoke, but shook their heads enough to stir up a dust storm. Jimmy flipped his revolver back into its holster, and began tidying up the money on the table into neat piles. He tucked a stack into the dealer’s front shirt pocket. “For your orderly game. Top of the line. Truly.” He took the other three stacks and placed them on the bar in front of Barkeep. “For the drinks. And the chair.” He smiled warmly. Barkeep made no move to collect the money, but nodded once, slowly.
“Pissin’ Jimmyyyyyy!!” A voice called, loudly and shakily from outside the saloon.
“Excuse me, gents.,” Jimmy tipped his tan hat to the men, turned and strolled outside through the doors, still swinging from the last man who ran through them.
Hank took deep breaths that were actually much quicker than they were deep to try to slow the shaking in his hands. His clinking spurs sounded to him like a loose bolt in a locomotive engine. Goddammit, he had told himself he would be ready for this.
The tan hat man--Pissin Jimmy--moseyed out into the center of the road, about 25 yards down from Hank. He made no great move towards the gun drooping from his side. Instead he dusted off his pants.
Hank blurted what was racing through his mind.
“Y-you killed my brother!”
The villain said nothing. Hank wasn’t sure he
had heard him.
“Six years!” Hank continued, getting his monologue going. “Six years we robbed banks together! An’ nobody was faster than ol’ Sal! Not a scratch on ‘im!”
Jimmy tossed his hat to the side, and Hank saw his face for the first time. He couldn’t find his features, 25 yards away, but he could tell the kid was blonde, young, and probably handsome.
Hank realized that when the time had finally come he had a lot less to say than he thought he did. “I’ma gonna kill ya!” He shouted.
Pissin Jimmy didn’t say a word. But something did change. Starting at his crotch, a dark patch began to spread down the legs of his pants. Hank’s fears evaporated instantly. “HahaHA!” Hank’s fightin’ stance collapsed and he leaned his hands on his knees. “Pissin--” he was overcome with laughter, “Pissin!--” tears were squeezing out of the corners of his eyes, “Pissin’ Jimmy!” He smacked his knee twice. “You ain’t nothin more than a scared-shitless kid!” He assumed a falsetto and waved his hands around in the air. “Whatsa mattta? Wet da bed again wittle Jimmy?”
He laughed and laughed and Pissin’ Jimmy waited until the fit started to subside. “Had your fill?” Jimmy called.
Hank wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, had a couple more laughs. “Sure, kid,” he laughed one more time, then took a pleased sigh. “Sure.”
“Whenever you’re ready.”
Hank moved fast. After feigning one more chuckle, he whipped his hand down to his holster and drew his gun, nothing fancy, out of the holster and at the bad guy, just like his kid brother had taught him.
Pissin Jimmy didn’t twitch until the gun was pointed at his heart. He moved with a slow grace that was quicker than a bat of a dragonfly’s wing. Then it was over. One shot per duel, just like all the rest.
The first drop of liquid that hit the ground was cold,
red blood.
Hammer Hank meets the Pissin' Pistol
sam dale-gau
new fish in downtown
janice kim
"Piggly Wiggly's is the Christian Way"
dana walden
Someone needs to explain to me why "WELCOME TO _____" signs are a thing. All my life, I'd drive to my Maw's (that's Southern for great grandma) and pass the "welcome to GEORGIA" sign and then the "welcome to TENNESSEE" sign and then the "welcome to GEORGIA" sign again. In Appalachia the roads weave between states like they're a basket. It gets very confusing.
But it really don't matter. The only functional difference between Hamilton and Catoosa Counties is whether or not you can buy wine at the grocery store. As it says in the good book, God intended for us to buy beer two aisles from the hamburger helper. Thou shalt not patron the liquor and smoke shop.
Which is to say, "PIGGLY WIGGLY HAS BOOZE HERE" would be a much more effective sign. Gets right to the point. Signals to all that the Lord's work is being done here. So we’d make a stop on the way to Maw’s for some wine. Unless it’s a Sunday.
The Piggly Wiggly dairy aisle is the closest I've been to heaven. God made me a cheese lady and the devil made me allergic to dairy, but the Piggs is the only place off the state line that has that good good fake cheese.
Oh. For all y'all who don't know, Piggly Wiggly is a supermarket. It's like the KMart of grocery stores. Y'all do know what a KMart is? Oh. Good.
icebreaker sublimation
victoria helmer
Shadow of the Bear
connor walker
Pedrito’s crowing woke me up. There were pauses in between his cries at the sun where I was able to find peace, but he would scream again when I got used to the silence. After a while, I had taken enough and finally ripped off my sheets.
“iCállate!” I yelled, still lying down, though he responded by crowing even louder. “Pollo pésimo,” I muttered, but he crowed again as if to tell me he heard me. I eventually got dressed and made my way to the chicken coop to gather eggs for breakfast, but heard the clanging of metal out in the distance. Pots and pans being shaken on a string, tin cans muffled by their contents, donkey hooves wrapped in iron shoes, playing an incoherent tune for the rough voice singing along to it. I walked back onto my porch and stood akimbo, watching him toddle his way up the hills. He had a white shirt stained a yellowish-brown from wear and sweat, brown work pants with green suspenders, and a pair of black ranch boots. His hat was round and floppy from overuse, and hair slightly grayed. “Ho-la there, amigo!” he called out to me, still walking alongside his donkey. “Ya happen to, uh,” still grunting and panting, “to speak English?” I waited for him to approach my porch so I wouldn’t have to yell.
“I speak enough, yes.”
“All rightey,” he rested his hand on his hip and fanned his face with his hat. “You gotta name, mister?”
“Espinosa,” I extended my hand, “Ulises Espinosa.”
“Jackson,” he said, shaking my hand.
“No last name?” I asked. He laughed as a response.
“No, sir, I left that back in Nevada.” He laughed a little more at his own joke before moving on. “So, Ulysses, I’m gonna get on and assume that this here is your land. Now, I hate to intrude and all, but as a workin’ miner I gotta make a claim at some time’r other. You get where I’m headed?”
I nodded. “You want to have a claim on my land, yes?”
“Precisely!” He nodded once in agreement. “Of course, that bein’ if it’s alright with ya, Mr. Espinosa.”
I looked around my property. Although it was small for a rancho, it was still a generous portion of land. I thought that having one miner camping on my property would be fine, especially since it would be temporary. “How long do you intend to stay?” I asked.
“Oh,’bout ‘til i find somethin’,” he said, “or ‘til I’m tired of looking. If I do find anything, though, I’ll be sure to toss a few nuggets your way for your troubles.”
“I think that it will be alright with me then. Bueno suerte,” I said, and turned back into my house.
“Alright, bully fer me! I’ll be outta yer hair soon enough, Mr. Espinosa!” and with that, he went off toward the creek.
Jackson became the only person I would interact with on a daily basis. He would often come up for supplies, to tell me of his finds, but most of the time I think he just wanted the satisfaction of feeling his mouth move. He was a friendly man, but I had retreated from the towns in order to have peace and quiet; it was hard to find that with Jackson. He was a man who seemed to revel in the disorder of life, which would be fitting for a prospector such as himself.
Days passed before Jackson found anything, but when he did he seemed to let the whole world know. I heard hollering echo throughout the canyon, and soon enough he came up to my doorstep to deliver the news.
“A pocket! A pocket full a’ gold! Can ya believe it, Ulysses? Sweet Jesus, I’m rich!” He told me before coming into my house.
He sniffed out my alcohol like a bloodhound before pouring us both glasses and putting one in my hand, and downing his own in a single gulp. He insisted on having a party between the two of us to celebrate and told me he’d keep my rancho a secret. He gave me a share of his find and went to town to cash in.
Not a week later, tents sprang up like dandelions in the spring. Over time, the tents turned into soddies, soddies to cabins, cabins to houses, saloons, brothels, hotels, general stores. The town of Powell was founded in just shy of a year of my first meeting with Jackson. I had wanted to bring my complaints to someone, but the “town” had been an unorganized confederacy of settlers until it was officially recognized by the California Republic. The town hall, which was no more than wooden walls surrounded by ramparts of scaffolding, was now where any and all complaints could be heard. So I made my way.
Construction workers flooded the space where secretaries and office employees would soon occupy, but the man whom I assumed to be the mayor was busy nonetheless. I approached his desk and introduced myself; he motioned for me to take a seat on a bundle of lumber.
“So, Mr. Espinosa, what can I do for you?” his mustache shifted with his lips as he formed a smile.
“Well, I’ve come to tell you that I think you are on my property. In fact, this whole town is,” I explained.
“I see, you must be new in town and you’re looking for an available lot. Well, I’m afraid that is a matter for the bank, not…”
“No, Señor, you misunderstand me. I’ve been living here for the past twenty years, and you are on my property,” I cut him off. I was angry, of course, but I had to remind myself to stay calm. Nonetheless, I was escorted out of what was going to be the town hall.
Over time, the people of Powell became just another thing to deal with. I would smile and introduce myself, and explain that I was already well acquainted with the area. People still insisted that I was a new resident, though. Trees were felled, plains turned into cropland, and the creek dried up after a dam was built for hydromining. The life I wanted to leave behind was coming back to me. I didn’t want it that way.
I started with the town hall—the sawdust still on the floor made good kindling. I doused the stores, the saloons, and the inn in oil and watched them catch each other on fire, one after another. People began to notice and wake up, running around, yelling and screaming, babies crying, dogs barking, mules braying. I watched from my house. Everyone pointed fingers at one another, and their fingers drew weapons and pulled triggers. I watched from my house. In the morning, Pedrito crowed, and I went to get eggs from the chicken coop.
Near and Far / Places and Spaces
beth kutina
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 our advisor, Dorothy Mukasa, and to our faculty advisor, Gaurav Majumdar.