Volume 2, Issue 2
Through the Keyhole
Letter from the Editor
The keyhole provides a way to catch a brief glimpse of what lies beyond the locked door. Apart from its voyeuristic possibilities and sexual implications (as one quarterlife staff member quipped, “Put your key in my hole,”) the keyhole evokes images of spatial displacement (internal versus external), as well as concepts of confinement and exclusion. Conceptually, the keyhole frames our perceptions and limits our views. However, the connotations of the preposition “through” demonstrate the potential for progress, for overcoming constraint, for deviously passing the locked door.
In this issue, writers explore the various implications of the keyhole as a literary motif. Issue two contains graphic poetry, historical fiction, a fairy tale, political poetry, found poetry, and a study of place. Their writing portrays the diverse array of literary canvases available to the subjective gaze through the framework of the keyhole.
Wish I Were There
Stazh Zamkinos
I once took
a picture, in exchange
for my footprint on the ruins,
of a hole in the ancient rocky wall
but it wasn't of empty space.
It was of dripping green trees
and blushing red flowers
beyond the hole.
It was a
stolen peek
into a throbbing
world, swollen with
mysterious questions
about a culture that I knew
far too little about for me to
frame, brag about and stare at,
take comfort in when this side
can't satisfy my nosy curiosity.
Eavesdropping
Meghan Carlson
So picture my mother and one and a half bottles of champagne…
…and she gets so angry because he bitches back, she goes inside her house, GRABS A BAT, and hits him! She didn't bash him or anything…
Next picture us in the bathroom, washing our hands, when a woman comes in with a cute seven-week-old baby. We're cooing. ("Oh my God! I want one!")
… and it tapped him once in awhile. The neighbor saw this and called the cops, but when the cops came…
…the woman's all, "Yeah, poor thing's hungry.” And she…
sentenced her to anger management (which she needs) but she called me…
and my mother goes, "I bet she's hungry!" and pinches the woman's breast, making a honking sound.
But she was carrying a bat…
…which didn't look good.
The Twilight Bakery
Raisa Stebbins
It was one of those horribly cold, drizzling Tuesday mornings, when the sun just isn’t ready to come bubbling up over the horizon. At six AM, as his alarm jangled, Jack Albricht merely turned over and curled up, hoping that it might be a warmer, happier Wednesday on the other side of the room. Unfortunately it wasn’t. There would be no going back to sleep, Tuesday or no. It was six AM, and that meant cinnamon-rolls-the-size-of-your-head at Roddy’s. Jack could see it in his mind’s eye. Vetch Heulwen would have already driven down from her old farmhouse in her rattletrap car to arrive at the bakery. Right now she would be playing music, because Vetch liked to sing. Lit by the harsh luminescence of the kitchen lights, Vetch—the bakery angel of Roddy’s café—would spread her cinnamon and nutmeg wings and prepare to create miracles as big as your head.
Everyone knew about Roddy’s. It was famous for its bizarrely named and delicious delicacies: the Exploding Cherry Bombs, Apple Armageddons, Electric Lemon Sunbursts, and Black Chocolate Moose. Everything and anything that Roddy’s served was bound to be delectable, but the cinnamon rolls were the crowning glory of the café. There was no menu at Roddy’s. People came to eat what Vetch made because it was all simply fantastic. A Welsh immigrant with a need to feed, Vetch was the queen of the bakery. Although there was no menu, everyone knew that Tuesdays and Thursdays were Cinnamon Roll Days, and that was exactly why Jack Albricht was stumbling out of bed.
Still somewhat bleary, Jack stumbled through his morning routine, gagging on a cup of the dregs of last night’s coffee in a desperate attempt to wake up, and swilling it down with toothpaste. Donning his tie and snatching his umbrella, Jack galoshed his way through the early spring mud and rain across Kilbright Street, down two blocks and through a side street. He had a pastry to snag before work.
Even at six AM, Roddy’s was brightly lit and humming with business. The booths were already filling with Jack’s co-workers, neighbors, and friends, all guzzling steaming hot coffee and tea. Stepping into Roddy’s was a new experience every time. Jack always paused just inside the door to savor the scents of cinnamon, sugar, and spices, and the hum and murmur of people whose day had just begun. Already, Roddy’s was a cacophony of color, mismatching chairs and cutlery, bright splashes across the walls from when the café had been repainted a few years back in fresh, lively reds, greens, blues, and purples, articles and artwork from various patrons cluttering the back wall. The patrons themselves were a sensory explosion in their own right: businessmen like Jack, shop owners, teachers, the local hooligans, Mary the waitress, whose smile was ready and coffee was hot, Lucien the busboy, who was really 32, Roddy, the man who ran the café and kept accounts, but who was most often found chatting with anyone who would listen, and finally Vetch herself. The kitchen door was always open, so that Vetch could carry on a conversation while punching dough into divinity.
On this particular grey Tuesday, Vetch, who was all over flour, was carrying on a loud debate about the latest town gossip, surrounded by a group of admirers. She looked up when she heard the bell hung above the door jingle. Jack! She greeted him with a vibrant smile before turning back to her followers. Jack elbowed his way through the throng, careful not to bump Mary. He had no sooner found a seat, than Mary slid him a hot mug that smelled of wakefulness and Vetch sauntered her way over, a cloud of bakery warmth in her wake. You look like a cinnamon roll t’day, I think. She flashed him a cheerful wink. Piping hot. He smiled and thanked her. She whisked back to the kitchen and in seconds a sunny yellow plate covered in a mass of sticky cinnamon-filled heaven was placed in front of him. Roddy said something to make Mary laugh and Vetch started singing from the kitchen. Inhaling the scent of his coffee and savoring the first taste of Vetch’s masterpiece, Jack knew it was going to be a good day.
As he was searching for his umbrella, Vetch came out of the kitchen again, the room brightening with her. She waved joyfully. Come back ‘round dinnertime! I’ll ‘ave a Lemon Sunburst for you, luv! Jack closed his umbrella; he’d be soaked through when he got to work, but somewhere around dinnertime, the sun was already shining.
On Having the Darkest Hair in the Room
Katie Presley
it’s all in the way the light acts. it’s
how it makes up its mind and follows
you as you sit there or walk in or
grab a drink.
because you have the darkest hair in the room.
worth dancing on, the light, the lighter hairs,
but
not quite so ingenious as this,
the dark.
if I were a light, I would sleep there.
watch how any luminous piece of it goes
in to rest after all that dancing.
stepping lightly on the heels for the
blisters.
darkest hair is the recuperation for the
light. there it rests.
not too many people get old and go for
blonde. they miss the nesting of it all, the
resting of it all and I bet that’s
heartbreaking.
lots of people want to be a house for light.
they can’t!
the only house is the darkest head.
and of course only one person can walk in with
that.
watch the way the light unfolds. it
stretches its legs and fingers
because it is just that elegant of a thing.
the unfolding starts, the ballet, only in the
exact second when you look around
and see that it’s you this time! it’s you!
the light has chosen you and followed you,
your darkest head,
ceased the dancing with others, to take
your hand (your hair)
kiss it goodnight
and sleep there.
Cornfield
Martin Stolen
looking in, through thin whispering
gaps between leaves of corn
you held her, arm round
I’m sure you’re warm, nights
curled hair against soft face
you held her, laughing
her eyes shining dark
joy into the corn
curling columns
of matte orange cells,
huddled, desiccating,
beginning a slow peal
you held her bright and satisfied
as you should be
night standing round, in rows
its eyes on your paired form
you, looking inward
that version of yourself
spread out in radiating lines,
in convex
her eyes shining dark
joy into the corn
The Twig, the Traitor, and the Troll
Kaitlin Phillips
Once upon a time there lived a girl who was neither a princess nor a noble farmer’s daughter. Rather, her father did the taxes for their small village, and her mother taught the village children and passed judgments on their parents. They lived fairly comfortably in their yellow house, which was a little too large to be cozy, with creaky stairs and pictures that refused to stay on the walls. The girl was their only child, but if they were asked if she was their pride and joy, there would have been some hesitation while the father contemplated his paperweights and the mother thought wistfully of the shawl upstairs. But they loved her dearly and did not complain very often that she was not terribly beautiful. When her sixteenth birthday came and went without a prince or a frog falling in love with her, they stayed silent. When her seventeenth birthday passed and she had not stumbled upon a magic treasure trove or befriended a fairy, they started sending her worried glances and kept having conversations that awkwardly broke off whenever she entered the room. By her eighteenth birthday, after she had failed to anger a witch or fall into an enchanted sleep, they had become seriously concerned.
Meanwhile the girl, oblivious to the disappointment she was causing her parents, lived her life as a normal girl should. She laughed with her friends, fumbled around with the blacksmith’s son behind the stable, and was suitably embarrassed by her mother and father. The fact that they expected something magical to happen to her never even crossed her mind.
Which is why she was so surprised when something did.
It all started the day her parents sat her down and gave her an ultimatum. They loved her dearly, they said, but they couldn’t take the pain anymore. If she didn’t have an extraordinary experience soon, like all normal people, she could no longer claim to be their daughter.
The girl blinked up at them, too stunned to speak. They continued. It wasn’t that they were being hypocritical, they said. Her father had once helped a dwarf build a fence and had been rewarded with a set of paperweights, and her mother had been briefly loved by a Duke who had presented her with an Elven-made shawl before he rode off forever on his perfect white horse. Both events, of course, occurred before their eighteenth birthdays. Their daughter, then, was disastrously behind.
The girl still said nothing, but merely swallowed past the tickle in her throat, stood up, and exited the yellow house. Her parents were saddened but relieved by her reaction. Feeling like they had done their duty, they felt a weight lift off of them. Her father settled down to his numbers and her mother to her judgments.
It was during dinner a week later when the girl came home, striding into the kitchen and interrupting a debate on the merits of caning. Her parents stared at her and she at them. She was very pale as she placed a twig between them on the table and silently went upstairs.
The mother and the father did not speak as they stared at the thin brown stick. Surely this was not her extraordinary experience? If it was, why were her eyes so red, and why was her face so cold?
There was no verbal agreement that they would not touch the unassuming twig, but it was understood all the same. The father went to his study and held his paperweights, willing them to glow, while the mother danced in her room with quivering lips, her shawl twirling around her. The girl remained in her room, the door tightly closed.
The girl didn’t speak for three days.
She would come downstairs in the morning, eat her breakfast, do her chores, and drift silently back up to her room, remaining there until her mother, creases lining her brow, would call her to dinner.
The mother had taken to wearing the shawl under her clothes now, just to keep it close. She watched her daughter at dinner and at breakfast and felt the silk slipping against her skin.
The twig was still there, but it was larger. No one mentioned the slight increase in size, how it now touched the plates on two sides of the table.
The silence began to swallow the yellow house.
On the third day of silence they were eating dinner, the only sounds the clink of silverware on china, the crunch of jaws working, and the hollow knock on the door.
The parents looked up; the girl froze, mouth stopped around a piece of bread. The mother sent a look towards the father, who slowly began to rise out of his chair.
The knock came again.
The father made his way across the room to the door, treading even slower than his tired bones demanded. The girl swallowed the bread. The mother licked her lips, mouth suddenly dry. Just as the father reached for the handle, the door swung inward to reveal a troll standing in the doorway, bundle in one hand, cane in another.
The mother let a small sound escape her lips, more an exhalation of air than anything else. She hadn’t seen a troll for years, since back when a Duke loved her. The father stared, trying to figure out what this creature was, his mind tripping over the difference between a gnome and a dwarf.
It was old, that was for certain, but how old was impossible to tell under the layers of dirt and matted hair. The only way to identify its sex was the stained grey dress it wore. A slightly pungent smell emanated from it in subtle wafts that floated across the room.
“Let her in,” the girl said, her voice low and raw with disuse. The troll’s head turned to regard her, and the troll began to make her way across the floor. She came to a halt in front of the girl, who was shaking only slightly and not very noticeably.
It spoke.
“My son,” it croaked.
The girl shook her head. “No.”
“Marry him.”
“I will not.”
“Marry him.”
“I cannot.”
Her parents exchanged excited glances over her head. A troll prince: not the most orthodox son-in-law, but a son-in-law all the same, and while they didn’t know for sure that he was a prince, no one would go to all this trouble for merely a peasant, would they? They watched and waited.
“He wants you.”
“Let him.”
“He’ll have you.”
“He already did.”
“He wants you.”
“No.”
The mother frowned. This didn’t seem to be going quite like it should.
“He forgives you.”
“Good for him.”
“Come back to the bridge.”
“I’ll not live under a bridge.”
“Spoiled slut.”
It was the father’s turn to frown now. There should be jewels, slippers, proclamations of love, not old trolls and bitter words.
A third voice entered the conversation.
“She’ll marry him.”
They all turned to look at the mother, whose lips were slightly parted. She cleared her throat.
“She’ll marry him.”
The girl’s eyes closed. The troll smiled.
“She will,” the father agreed firmly. Eighteen was high time to be married. Besides, trolls never wanted to marry humans unless they were humans themselves, under spells or something of that nature. Everyone knew that. It would all turn out well.
“I’ll take her now,” the troll rasped, and circled one bony hand around the girl’s wrist. The girl’s other hand shot out and grabbed the twig.
“No,” hissed the ancient troll.
“I won’t go without it.”
“I won’t have that near him.”
“Then he won’t have me near him.”
The troll gnashed her teeth and pulled her hair, but the determination in the girl’s face was clear and remained firm. Finally, the troll gave a great groan and began to leave, dragging the girl behind her with a strength that defied belied the troll’s size. The girl let herself be pulled away, clutching the twig.
The door slammed behind them. A few pictures fell off the walls.
The mother coughed. The father sniffed.
“My taxes,” he mumbled, and exited into the study.
Silk slipped against her skin, and the mother shivered.
A week later, dinner was roast beef and peas, and the father melancholically chewed the over cooked meat while the mother verbally wondered why children could not wait to attend school until they were at least old enough to appreciate a good lesson plan when they saw one. He was so caught up in his chewing and she in her wondering that they did not notice their daughter until she walked past them.
The father started choking on the dry beef and the mother stopped mid-sentence, her mouth hanging open. The girl turned and regarded them.
She was wearing a heavy velvet dress, purple in color, ripped in odd places and stained with mud across the hem. A gold circlet sat askew on her damp brow. There was a bruise on her right cheek and scratches on her hands. A piece of twine was twisted tightly around the ring finger on her left hand, cutting deep into the swollen flesh. She still held the twig, now twice the size it had been before, stained here and there with red.
She watched them coolly, turned, and went silently up the stairs. The father finally swallowed, tears streaming out of his eyes as he breathed deeply. The mother watched her daughter retreat.
Everyone in the village clamored the next day over the news: the missing Queen and her son had appeared suddenly in the palace, both sporting near-fatal wounds. The King, apparently, almost had a heart attack when he saw his wife reappear in his bedchamber, bleeding all over his newest concubine. The Prince refused to speak to anyone except the court physician. He wore, they said, a piece of twine around his left finger.
The mother and father heard the news and said nothing. That night, the mother went home and twirled in her shawl a final time before she threw it into the fireplace and sobbed until dawn. The father took his paperweights into the garden, buried them, dug them up again, and after much hesitation buried them once more just past the gate.
The girl remained in her room and did not speak to her parents. The next month, she married the blacksmith’s son and they moved to a cozy blue house in a different village, where the pictures stayed on the walls and they did their own taxes.
Sophomores, Don't Declare Two Majors
Dan Dennedy-Frank
Unless you want trouble.
Unless you want to be sawed
in half, smile and wiggle your feet,
only to eventually find your legs
introducing your parents
to George Bridges at graduation.
Won’t you be happy enough
swallowing one sword,
receiving one round
of vaccinations?
Why would you insist
on being inside the bellies
of two whales
traveling opposite directions?
I invite you, slightly less
burnt sisters and brothers,
to peek with me through the keyhole.
Do you see yourself better
straddling two realities,
or do you think you might be content
under one sun, one sky,
solidly planted in a nutrient soil?
(Senior—Psychology & Spanish)
Movement of the People
Ari Frink
The muffled moans and sheets shuffling stumble,
Tripping, still inebriated, back to the place where sounds fall asleep;
The floor and wall outside form a perfect angle for my back,
Supporting me in this time of need.
A pause in the rustlings, and through the keyhole comes,
“Water?”
Their parting is marked by
The click of the door lock and then toweled legs;
I am silent, unnoticed on His way downstairs.
What is sexile?
Was there ever a Sexodus?
Did an unwilling servant of God hear a talking bush (or fish),
And lead us, The sexiled,
Those who cried up to God, Those who are supposedly His Chosen,
To the Promised Land?
Where we could be free to sexile ourselves,
An eye for an eye,
And the whole world’s fucked?
He comes back upstairs, the thunder of steps,
One hand on teal towel,
One on two bottles of water;
He lets me retrieve my book,
So long as I ‘cover my eyes.’
I close my eyes and slouch through Israel.
Waiting...
Anuradha Sawkar
Margaret Rose “Meg” Olsen sat upon a closed commode. The dim light from the bare bulb over the mirror did not reach the corners of this “powder room.” Presently, her hands— like white butterflies, she had been told—sat flat upon her skirt. Was that a creaking board? The door opening? Meg’s corset bit into her ribs as she held her breath. No, not yet. Meg exhaled to whatever extent she could. Wearing a corset was not at all what it ought to be, she thought. However, this was the least of the things that felt foreign this night. Meg was frightened by the seeming calm that washed over her. What a time to feel peaceful! Yet she supposed the mind had different ways of expressing pain. Quickly, quietly, nervously she began smoothing the creases in her deep purple dress.
The early 1900s had not been kind to Olsen farm, despite their faith. Meg’s father grew wheat, a crop that had been destroyed by drought and falling prices following rumors of world war. Mr. Olsen had been chewing on a stalk of the golden grain that night at dinner when it was decided that Meg should move to the bustling town of Walla Walla, Washington to help support the family, his brow slightly furrowed. It was the only sign of distress her father had shown.
“Ay, well these things happen,” he had said in his customary fashion. “We’ll do as we can manage.”
It was all a God-fearing Christian could say. Meg’s mother had nodded, tight lipped, while Paul and Mary stared into their plates. They all held their place there: Mrs. Olsen tended to Mr. Olsen and the farm hands, Paul helped sow and till, and Mary was to be married soon.
Margaret Rose was different than her younger brother and sister. She was often found with her curly, deep-red locks framing the pages of a book. Most girls stopped going to the one-room schoolhouse when they reached their teens. Not Meg: she hoped to be a governess, to write stories and essays. Thus, for Meg, the prospect of Walla Walla with its Whitman Seminary and College held volumes of excitement.
“College service: four dollars a day, six days a week, church on Sundays with plenty left over for the offering,” the advertisement in the Bulletin had read.
Perhaps, Meg thought, perhaps if I work well they will offer me a place at Whitman to learn. The idea filled her with an eagerness that she could hardly bear! With that in mind, she willingly left her homestead.
If only she had read more carefully. “..Church on Sundays with plenty left over for the offering…” That sentence remained engraved in Meg’s mind. She should have asked where that “plenty” would come from.
Shuddering away the past, Meg stood up and positioned herself in front of the cloudy mirror that served as a door to a medicine cabinet. The medicine cabinet provided an eave to a meager sink and a small alcove above in which lay rouge blusher and blood-red lip polish. Meg touched the image that gazed back with her fingertips. It felt cold. Her face was not of consequence to her new life, although people in her little town had always whispered that her looks were “too pretty for her own good.”
“I suppose some of my face will be of consequence,” corrected Meg aloud, reconsidering the make-up over the basin. Noting pain in her doe eyes, she fixed her gaze on the black and white tiled floor.
“That one’s red locks and her book knowledge will be the ruining of her,” they had said. “God will avenge himself on the prideful.” Meg would not, however, accept the label of “vain.” She never knew what she did to deserve such animosity from the town—perhaps she looked haughty, but she’d never tried to be. It could have also been her “book learning.” In either case, Meg thought, they would be happy now. She was to pay a high price for this so-called “pride.”
Mama always said I must accept my fate and do what is Christian, thought Margaret Rose, but what am I to do when fate leads me to sin? Mama certainly would not be able to answer my question—outside of the Scriptures, there are no other answers for Mama…
It was no use thinking of that now.
Meg glanced swiftly around the powder room, searching for something to anchor her. She let her eyes linger on the many pegs, towel bars, and the lofty cabinet. These held the tools of a vixen: brassieres, garters, satin gowns, pantaloons, masques, a bustier, costume fancies, an extra hoop skirt, and many unspeakable things besides. They now belonged to her. Did she belong to them? Meg quelled the gasp that came at that thought: the old woman at the door had threatened any unnecessary noise with whipping. She avoided looking at the narrow tub. The gloomy light now bathed the small wash-room with a garish horror.
The old woman’s laughter drifted through the crack under the door, followed by someone else’s masculine, expectant grunt. Meg looked at the floor again immediately. The black and white patterned floor seemed like an eternity, before her and after her. Meg thought upon them. The door slowly opened, and the night came with it. Meg was lost in the tiles.
Seeds
Christie Seyfert
You see it's still sunny in California,
late December and the pavement is missing its
might, unprepared for the bustle of bodies.
You can't imagine a tree in the living room,
its top knotted in stringy tinsel
singing at the season and its freshness.
Instead you smell your father in his grave punching
holes in the Bible buried with him. The lawnmower roars
extra high on hot days, so he wakes from his
sleep, planting muscle matter and brain cells into the
belly of the earth the way he used to plant petunias.
Water those seeds, Pops-- the life bits, the antimatter.
And your mother rubs her silken legs
like she's smoothing the icing on one of her cakes,
in the kitchen, of its lumps and its lines.
She stares at the television as a home video plays
of your sister naked in the bathtub and of
you-- an illegitimate infant, still looking like him,
though small and puckered in the bubbles.
She cries, (your father never knew), he just sleeps,
still, eyes rotting into his nose cavity
and sinks further into the ground than ever before.
The clouds above their heads empty cold water--
low splatters but silence inside.
September 2001
Carly Lane Rue
Mom and Dad were fighting
In the room beyond the door
Dad aggressive
Mom passive-
Aggressive
(They had been fighting like this for years
But now)
Dad murmured something soft, seductive
And Mom screamed sing-song
Words we didn’t understand
We opened the door
Just a little
Just enough
To see a small silver object
Fly
At Dad’s outstretched hand
And
Slice off the tops of his two tallest fingers.
We gasped
He roared
We slammed shut the door
And all of us girls
(We were all of us girls)
Set about drawing a world
Of impossible dimensions
In invisible marker
Our throats swollen with shame
Our faces slack
And inscrutable.
Masthead
| editor-in-chief | Kim Hooyboer | |
| assistant editor | Leslie Beach | |
| layout editor | Deirdre Gorman | |
| copy editors | Leslie Beach Stazh Zamkinos | |
| staff | Jullianne Ballou Meghan Carlson Avi Conant Ben Kegan Robin Lewis Dena Popova |
