Portraits - THE VOID
Transcription
Portraits - THE VOID
THE VOID vol. 11 / issue 1: Portraits www.thevoidmagazine.com A very special thank you to our sponsors: The content of The Void is published under the Attribution-Non-Commercial-No-Derivatives creative commons license, unless specified otherwise by the submitter. THE VOID Portraits / vol. 11 / issue 1 FICTION THE ONLY PHOTO OF ME WITH SHORT HAIR / DOMENICA MARTINELLO / 7 LE CHANTEUR D'OPÉRA / MONA SACUI / 8 A TURBULENT AIRPLANE IS HARD TO TRUST / JAY RITCHIE / 10 NONFICTION THE SOUR ONE / ANDREA SUN / 13 POETRY BARELY NAKED IN THE LIGHT / JESSE ANGER / 21 PRINTEMPS ÉRABLE / WILL VALLIÈRE / 22 S / DIANDRE PRENDIMANO / 25 SPINDLE / ALI PINKNEY / 26 FEATURES ARTIST FEATURE: ANNA SOMERS / 12 COVER ARTIST: JONO CURRIER / 16 LETTER FROM THE EDITOR / 4 HIRING CALL / 30 CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS / 31 FRONT AND BACK COVER BY JONO CURRIER LETTER FROM THE EDITOR Remember that one scene in Blade Runner where Harrison Ford inserts a photograph into the Esper machine and navigates through it in its endlessly small detail? It’s left unexplained, but it seems like, in order to find Zora, the machine-viewer’s angle rotates slightly, or shifts, and Deckard’s actually able to see around something. Wait a minute, go right, stop. A portrait discovered within the photo of a cluttered room. The thing about science fiction is that it makes some very real unlikelihoods possible, and we dream. A team at MIT has shown that it is in fact possible. They developed a camera with an ultrafast laser attachment that fires pulses at a speed of less than one trillionth of a second. Its light bounced off of the half-open door they fired it at, into the room beyond, and back into the camera, rendering a 3D image of the room’s contents behind the walls. It works, but they’re lasers and so not so safe. In Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes calls photographs the that-has-been and argues that they repeat what we could never repeat existentially. Because the photograph itself is rendered invisible, which accounts for why we say “this is me” as often or more than we say “this is a photo of me,” the photograph allows for the sight of self. Sight, not as in a mirror, but with a unique access to another definition of identity. Its truth, he argues, has been made permanent. Is there a better elegy than this argument in itself? He writes a lot about the punctum (Greek for “trauma”), the intensely private meaning to a photo that is suddenly and unexpectedly recognized or remembered. The thing that holds your emotional attention. It could be the nose of a loved one who’s no longer alive, and the meaning is in itself untranslatable. But what happens to that if we could move through a portrait of someone we lost and locate the other familiar details that we knew in real time and space? Move behind and see his unruly double-crown, the stitch-work of a dress you used to hold, a slight snowing of dandruff that, if you could, you’d fill your pillow with. Inhabit the space between their neck and the couch they’re sitting on, or a photo that they’re just slightly outside of, in the other room. What would it be like to know a memory so well that even the Wheel of Fortune puzzle on the TV behind the photographer is knowable again. There’s what you see at first, what you remember, and then there’s what you would be able to find. Give me a hard copy right there. - Michael Chaulk 4 THE VOID poetry editor editor-in-chief MICHAEL CHAULK JACOB SPECTOR fiction editor GLEB WILSON nonfiction editor GEORGIA WEBBER french content editor SOPHIE BISPING copy editor/managing editor AERON MACHATTIE art director/production manager AIDAN PONTARINI CONTRIBUTORS JESSE ANGER EMILY BELANGER AMANDA CRAIG JONO CURRIER DOMENICA MARTINELLO ALI PINKNEY DIANDRE PRENDIMANO JAY RITCHIE TESS ROBY MONA SACUI YULI SATO TALIA SHAAKED ANNA SOMERS ANDREA SUN WILL VALLIÈRE FICTION 6 6 PORTRAITS / VOLUME 11 / ISSUE 1 THE ONLY PHOTO OF ME WITH SHORT HAIR DOMENICA MARTINELLO Photograph by Tess Roby We are on the balcony the day that I moved into my first apartment. I am eighteen and my ears are sticking out. My hair looks slightly on the butch side, unruly with humidity. Your hair looks more feminine, your bangs stuck to your forehead. You are darker everywhere than I am— hair, eyes, skin, mouth. I stand pale at your side, shorter, with all that extra weight then. It coats my neck and breasts, drips lower down, hangs out of the frame like my arm around your waist is out of frame. Those smiles. But that Corona and your grip on it, God, terribly yellow and still carbonated. My throat clenches. Your fingers wrapped firmly around that neck, the veins on the back of your hands engorged like ridges in heat-rippled sand. That day’s weather seems unknowable, lost forever, except I know it’s not. All I’d have to do is try. I wear a pink cardigan, a hand-me-down, from a thinner, taller friend. The buttons strain like earlobes being pulled down, slowly stretching. You are wearing that t-shirt. The shirt—a faded blue, hanging lank, always a little damp looking. Secretly and permanently stained under the armpits, that burn hole at the stomach. You used to chain smoke like you wanted to drive something out of yourself. I would imagine your body—not just your lungs, but your arms, legs, stomach—as a balloon filled with smoke, and wonder what that something was. Then one day you quit, deflated, and I threw you sack-like over my shoulders. Always that shirt. Some days I feel anxious, as if I might spot it, the drowned blue hanging in my closet among my dresses and blouses. Sometimes out of the corner of my eye I expect to see it hanging off the lip of my laundry basket, dirty and begging to be washed. The photo’s centerpiece. And those smiles—even, hung on our faces like taxidermy trophies. You can tell by the angle of the photo, the tilt of the cheap disposable camera, that someone is falling in love with our smiles. This is not simply the only photo of me with short hair. If someone were to stare closer, or turn the photo in the light, they could almost see bruises puffing up around your eyes, my neck thinning out, my potted flowers crisping—and that little smudge down behind us. It’s impossible to be certain, but down the alley it looks like a couple fucking up against the brick. A lot can be left unaccounted for. My hair’s grown long and thick now, heavy over my shoulders. I stand on the balcony to say my goodbyes. I’m moving out. Ants trail into the empty apartment in a neat single file, ceaseless movement. I do not interrupt their progress. It’s hard to know exactly when the cheap ceramic flooring became such an unrecognizable color. Most things can be boxed up or thrown out, and I guess this should imply a kind of freedom. Alone on the balcony, the sun has a pulse. Weather for this July day: feverish. Sweat beads at the nape my neck. V 7 FICTION LE CHANTEUR D'OPÉRA MONA SACUI Illustration by Emily Belanger L’introduction des autobus-accordéon, ça m’a semblé être une bonne idée au départ. J’étais content, je me disais que j’allais enfin avoir un plus gros public, je me faisais toutes sortes d’illusions. Une idée saugrenue m’était même passée par la tête. Je voulais installer un rideau à l’entrée derrière moi, un rideau rouge en velours qui s’ouvrirait dès les premières notes de ma pièce d’opéra. Mais bon, je savais très bien que la Société n’allait pas trop apprécier, alors j’ai laissé tomber. De toute façon, j’étais content. Fébrile, même. J’avais bien hâte de conduire moi aussi un autobus-accordéon. Le premier jour, j’ai sondé le terrain avec du Wagner. Un peu fort, peut-être, mais absolument nécessaire. Il faut capter l’attention du public dès le départ. Quand je commence à chanter, un silence de plomb s’abat sur les passagers. Qu’importe leurs conversations, leurs disputes, leurs débats politiques. L’opéra commence, les surprend dans leur quotidien et envahit leur autobus. Il n’y a que les insensibles avec leurs écouteurs enfoncés dans le crâne qui font comme si de rien n’était, mais je sais qu’ils entendent ma voix. À la fin, ils applaudissent eux aussi. Tout le monde m’applaudit, je me lève, moi, le ténor, le baryton, le soprano, le n’importe quoi et je fais la révérence au feu rouge. Des sourires un peu moqueurs, des regards admiratifs, des larmes; je ne laisse personne indifférent. Quand je chante, le reste de ma personnalité s’évapore et les gens m’aiment enfin. On me dit souvent que j’ai une belle voix. Que j’aurais dû devenir chanteur d’opéra. Je leur réponds toujours que je connaîtrai mon heure de gloire un jour, qu’il n’est jamais trop tard. Je disais donc que j’avais entamé avec du Wagner. Mon premier jour en autobus-accordéon. Quelque chose d’étrange se produisit. Je jetai un coup d'oeil dans le rétroviseur d’en haut pour voir mon public. Comme prévu, les passagers de la première moitié de l’autobus s’étaient tus et me regardaient tous. Mais un murmure, non, un brouhaha distant se faisait encore entendre au fond. Le silence parfait n’existait plus. Ma voix n’atteignait pas la deuxième moitié de l’autobus ! Je pouvais apercevoir des jeunes qui s’agitaient sur les derniers bancs, des gens qui lisaient le journal, d’autres qui parlaient à leur voisin ou qui jacassaient au cellulaire. Indifférence totale. Je changeai de répertoire. Du Verdi. La forza del destino. La force du destin. Mon public. Mon public m’abandonna. Les bancs se vidaient petit à petit. Tous se rendaient dans la deuxième moitié de l’autobus. Seuls mes plus fidèles admirateurs ne bougèrent pas. Une vieille dame assise sur le siège réservé aux personnes à mobilité réduite, un homme en costume-cravate, deux jeunes étudiants… Mais tous les autres, les lâches, se rendaient au fond. Même les nouveaux passagers montaient et allaient tout droit vers le brouhaha. Un type entra et plaça sa carte sur le lecteur, qui hurla pour dénoncer le délinquant. Titre non valide. Je lui ordonnai de sortir de mon autobus. Comment osait-il vouloir assister au spectacle sans payer ? Réessayer de passer la carte ? Jamais ! Dehors, dehors ! Je le jetai dehors, ce criminel. Les semaines passaient. L’injure persista. On continuait de se réfugier au fond de l’autobus. Mon public, que j’avais choisi avec tant de soin, pouvait maintenant m’échapper ! Il avait trouvé un moyen. Comme les autres gens, dehors, qui peuvent s’éloigner de moi à leur guise, me laisser seul dans mon appartement ou sur le pas de leur porte, m’éviter comme ils le veulent parce que le monde est si vaste. Aux heures de pointe, ma voix était masquée par celles des 8 passagers, qui s’étaient multipliés comme des rats sous un décor pourri. Parfois je criais. Voix médiocre. Tempérament difficile. Vous ne serez jamais plus sur scène, vous délirez, vous parlez tout seul. Vous avez attaqué le metteur en scène, vous ne pourrez jamais, non, jamais travailler dans ce milieu. Carrière avortée. Carrière étranglée. Ah, mais je me trouverai un public, vous verrez. J’en étais venu à détester ces autobusaccordéon. Je les haïssais, je les haïssais, je les haïssais. Je voulais les assassiner, faire un virage brusque pour leur tordre le cou. J’avais perdu le contact avec mon public, je n’avais plus de public. J’étais laissé pour compte à mon volant, ignoré, isolé, mis de côté. Autant m’enfermer dans une cabine. Autant mettre un robot à ma place ou inventer des autobus téléguidés. Un public téléguidé. Un public qui survit spirituellement en se nourrissant de luimême. Un public cannibale. Un public qui n’a pas besoin d’opéra. Il fallait me mettre sur une ligne moins achalandée. Je l’exigeai à mon chef. Au moins, laissez-moi installer un interphone dans l’autobus. Je n’en pouvais plus de ces autobusaccordéon. Je n’en pouvais plus. J’attrapai ma chaise, je la lançai vers la fenêtre, qui se brisa en mille morceaux, comme si la voix d’un castrat l’avait fait exploser. Médiocrité générale. Tempérament impossible. Vous ne conduirez plus d’autobus, vous délirez, vous parlez tout seul. Vous avez attaqué votre patron, vous ne pourrez jamais, non, jamais retourner derrière l’un de nos volants. Carrière interrompue. Carrière fracassée. Ah, mais je me trouverai un autre public, vous verrez. V FICTION A TURBULENT AIRPLANE IS HARD TO TRUST JAY RITCHIE Lithographs by Talia Shaaked Dust motes swirl in the polygons of stale light that are slanting in through the glass wall that faces the tarmac. The air is dry and abrasive and every twenty seconds or so I imagine myself plunging my head into a bucket of water. I watch the dust motes and wonder if two of them ever move in perfect unison, like when someone opens a door and creates a rogue air current and the temperature drops a degree or something, if chaos theory allows for this. “What are you thinking about?” you ask me. I look at you then immediately past you. “Jelly,” I answer, directing my attention to a young-but-still-olderthan-us couple sitting behind you, maybe 30, max, who are splitting a homemade peanut butter and jelly sandwich into two right triangles. You turn around to look at them and they kind of cringe, averting their gaze downward, because they can sense we’re fighting. “You’re an asshole,” you reply. There is a pause before you stand up and walk away. The pause indicates that I’m supposed to follow you. My stomach turns and I wonder if I’m hungry, if you’re hungry too, if that’s why we’re fighting. I follow you out of the terminal and into the shopping mall section of the airport, and the horizontal distance between us is great enough that I need to speedwalk to keep you in sight. I rehearse what I will say when I catch up to you, but all I can come up with is, We should have made a sandwich, which is risky because it could be misinterpreted as, You should have made a sandwich, if I say it wrong. You veer into the bookstore that sells only bestsellers and magazines and you start browsing the titles, acting as if I’m not watching, as if we’re not fighting, as if you’re acting for an anonymous cameraman. You don’t look at me because you think it’s tacky, in movies, when actors look at the camera. I pick up a book. A white businessman in a suit is on the cover, smiling, arms open like he’s going to give me a hug, under the title How To Get People To Like You In 30 Seconds Or Less. Lesson one is about establishing a connection with a “person of desire” in a “closed environment,” where a “closed environment” is defined as a place where social interactions are not always welcome. Start with small talk, the book tells me, something about the weather to break the ice. The book acknowledges that this is mundane and expected, but necessary for those exact same reasons. I picture a businessman smiling with honest relief when another businessman of higher stature nervously mentions how awful the rain is. Secretly both businessmen love the rain. On another page, a “quick tip” in italics with a lightbulb graphic next to it informs me that standing with your arms crossed or your hands in your pockets makes your space a “closed environment.” I look up, realizing that I have spent too much time immersed in the book. You’re not in sight and are probably more angry than before. I put the book down and run after you, feeling stupid. You stare ahead, “walking through the airport mad” for the camera. “Are you cranky because you didn’t eat?” I ask. Both our moms use the word “cranky” so I feel weird whenever I use it, like it’s falsely gentle, like rubber bullets. “I’m not cranky,” you say. “But it’s nice to see that you’re paying attention to me for once.” We are starring in a more boring version of Blue Valentine. Right now in the movie it’s the part where we fight in the airport. 10 11 “I thought maybe you were hungry,” I say, not as attractively as Ryan Gosling would. “I was trying to pay attention to you.” “I’m not hungry,” you say, trying to be more Natalie Portman-y then Michelle Williams-y. “I’m sorry.” We stare at each other until I lose the staring contest, instead looking away down the longest hallway I’ve ever seen, so long that it needs a moving walkway. I think the word tunnelvision and plunge my head into a bucket of water. “What are you thinking about?” I’m afraid, is what I want to say when I open my mouth, but instead I vomit onto your flats. It’s not a lot of vomit, mostly bile, but none of it got on me, which is too bad, because it makes the vomit seem aggressive, rather than something accidental we can be grossed out by together. I hear you mutter something like “Fucking Jesus” as the flats exit my field of vision. People drag luggage in my periphery, averting their eyes skyward, like when someone’s dog is taking a shit. I clean up at the water fountain and wait for you there, my hands stuffed in my pockets. A closed environment, I think, removing them, as the boarding call for our flight echoes throughout the airport. I feel your hand grabbing mine before I see it. You walk ahead of me back to the terminal, and I notice your feet are bare on the carpet. “Where are your shoes?” I ask. We wait in line behind the olderthan-us couple, who are licking peanut butter and jelly from their fingers. “I threw them out.” We get through the gate without the flight attendants noticing your lack of footwear, holding our backpacks down by your feet to block their lines-of-sight. I stop in the middle of the accordion-tunnel and imagine the camera from your point-of-view. “What are you doing?” you ask. In the movie version, I untie my shoes and remove each sock, and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros’ single "Home" starts to play as we board the plane, and we play footsies with bare feet as the plane takes off. “I’m afraid,” I say, instead, staring at the pattern of over-animated equilateral triangles, circles, and long, wavering dashes on the carpet in the tunnel. V 12 NONFICTION THE SOUR ONE ANDREA SUN Photographs by Yuli Sato When a woman’s toenails reach a certain thickness, her life is at its end, my Buddhabellied grandmother said, squeezing my palms in her plump, little hands. When I visited Po Po, my maternal grandmother, she would call me to her room to watch Cantonese films, to teach me the language. It was warm in there, cluttered, the wallpaper made of soft red velvet. His braid means long life, she would say, motioning to the character onscreen. She’d peck her fingertips into my upturned palm, smiling. a man and his son push a wheelbarrow to the edge of a cliff. In the wheelbarrow is the deceased grandmother, limbs dangling from the sides in a merry little dance. When they reach the edge of the cliff, the father begins to heave the wheelbarrow. Grandmother sways in her cradle. But the son stops the father. Other times we watched the opera, listened to the sweet strain of zithers. Long, rippled feathers twitched in a delicate dance. Emperors pulled mountains, sleeves flying. A Princess sang. She is the prettiest girl in all of China, explained Po Po, but the empress sent her away, banished her. She cried by herself, hoping to one day come back to China. When she died, she went up to heaven to eat with the gods. “So that I may use it when you die,” replies the son. Another parable taught to me by my Po Po: “Don’t toss the wheelbarrow,” he says, “save it.” “Why?” asks the father. The father hangs his head in shame, and the family returns home all together. At night she rubbed her face raw, her eyes closed and her thin lips pursed, using hand towels dipped in boiling water. Her nose was a rosy bulb and sprayed like a whale with every rough stroke. Her thick, round glasses were yellowed, like the hundreds of thinleafed books she read, stacked on shelves throughout the house: fraying onion sheets, twine exposed along the spine. Non-descript covers, watercolour landscapes. Her scalp accumulated on the shoulders of her black velvet vest. She had an entire length of the kitchen table to herself and rooted herself there. Always a cigarette in hand, her daily incense, and beside her on a tin platter, a dusty black radio that picked up Chinese. They often sat sideby-side, straining to hear a faraway country. x Nai Nai was my father’s mother and lived with us at home. Her cool, silky skin, splattered with age-spots, hung loosely from her bony hands, her white hair fine and cobwebby. At dinner, the family gathered at the table: my father at the Head, my First Born sister at the Foot, and my mother and I crammed on opposite sides. There is, in eating, a delicate dance—the elder offers, and the youth accepts. As the child grows, the dance becomes more intricate: foot forward, step back, retreat, entreat, and after polite refusal proportional to your years, consent. But I did not have the Foot for it. I did not know the words. “Eat.” She raised her wobbling knee and placed her slipper on the table, shrimp pinched expertly between her chopsticks. “Wo bu yao.” I shrank in my seat. I don’t want. “Eat it, it’s good.” She climbed up on the table. Shuffled across. A trail of dandruff and stray white hairs and dried grains of rice. “Bu yao.” I retreated. “It’s tasty,” she insisted with greater force, the pinched chopsticks pecking at me like a pterodactyl. a butcher’s knife’s clap on a chopping board. What a spoiled egg! She ate her meal in cold, silent dignity, then scuffled into her room with an indignant whisper. Her bedroom was still and ancient, yellow sunlight through amber curtains. A goldrimmed clock ticked loudly above a boudoir, upon which were glass-stopped perfume bottles and rosy-smelling blushes, different coloured liners. A gold hand-mirror, intricately carved. Small-faced watches with thin, black straps. Her bed, heaped with blankets, was a mountain of mohair, so steep I would slide off trying the climb it, and sank once finally surmounted. Beside it, on a doily-covered armchair, was a Bugs Bunny doll wearing a beige safari jacket. His ears were thin, grey sheaths over metal wires, protruding through the pith. It belonged to my father, she said, as I contorted his limbs into a salutation. Beneath her bed, a Persian rug, deep and royal blue, flecked endlessly with particles of herself like a starry night sky. “Wo bu yao!” “EAT IT!” “WO BU YAO!” a shrill, piercing shriek. I did not have the finery of red embroidered silk, but the coarseness of blue jeans. She dropped back into her seat, her chin wobbling with rage. The brown hairy wart trembled. “Zhen me cho dan!” she spat, each word like In the morning she would lean over the side of the bed, wheezing, toes dipped in the heavens. Thirsty. When one’s toenails reach a certain thickness, one’s life is at its end. She wasn’t fond of telling stories, and there is only one that I remember. “I swam in a river once,” she laughed, “and there was a snake in it.” V 14 FEATURE MINI SERIES ANNA SOMERS Auntie Liz Called “Queen” by some, and “Auntie Liz” by others, Elizabeth Phillips is a prevalent member of the Little Burgundy community and is respected by all. Anna first met Liz after she broke up a fight between two teenagers by walking between them, pointing her finger at each of them and telling them to “stop acting so stupid.” Through occassional lunches together, Anna got to know more about Liz and the community she was so proudly a part of. Liz was recently recognized recognized by the Montreal government for her continuous contribution to both the Coalition of Little Burgundy, and the Caribbean community which surrounds her. The more time Anna spent with her, the more people of her community she began to meet and share stories with. These three photographs are part of a larger series that not only document the people and culture of Little Burgundy, but also Anna’s friendship with Auntie Liz. 16 17 18 COVER ARTIST Jono Currier’s work fuses appropriated images with romanticism to make an otherworldly third. Currier’s practice is situated in the genres of surrealism and the absurd. He constructs blueprints of dreams through his minimalistic approach to mixed media. His work plays off of collective memory and nostalgia by drawing inspiration from nature and the content of forgotten books. His fantastic realities offer his figures a false sense of escapism. JONO CURRIER PORTRAITS / VOLUME 11 / ISSUE 1 19 POETRY 20 20 PORTRAITS / VOLUME 11 / ISSUE 1 BARELY NAKED IN THE LIGHT JESSE ANGER Photograph by Anna Somers for Uncle Dave The empty chamber howls through the hollow in the chest. Only ifs have focused him on the pistol’s sight. He loads each silver silo. He empties out the rain, his gaze fixed on the broken column of the man in him. He raises his right hand, gives way to the barreling wind, rends— red widens in the overt light. Black around him. Davie found him under the stairs in a hum of old wiring slumped, doubled at the waist, with a hole in his chest. And with the face of a saint the remnant time closing in. Barely in the naked light. 21 POETRY PRINTEMPS ÉRABLE WILL VALLIÈRE Pencil Drawing by Amanda Craig perpetuated, a culture— rooms filled with air-conditioning where we sit around meals and use language proverbial, American a laughable I solemn & weary millions of boomers fitted for bikes and all the employees accused of brotherhood “ils se sont reveillés des comptables, des satisfaits, des prudents” but the unutterable we uncalm & unfolding glitch of street generational where spring broke— we say mongrel as in no master 22 PORTRAITS / VOLUME 11 / ISSUE 1 23 POETRY 24 PORTRAITS / VOLUME 11 / ISSUE 1 S DIANDRE PRENDIMANO Photography by Yuli Sato The sunlight in my bedroom is so low it is not mine to talk about. The room is warm. I am never as tired as S so I never wake up like S. Light breaks from her voice, follows her around soft, eager. At night, no matter what there is to do I wait for it alone till the moment can be put off. Even my shadow has a shadow. Always there’s a door opened by S, returning to me in the dark. I know something about S at night that she doesn’t, she mumbles softly in her sleep on the sofa: I want to replace myself with an inkblot. I want to be entirely lifted up so I can see the sea. I have no strength to move towards her in the dark. I realize that my fear is to stay alive, to return to the door because I have no clue who I am and S is so human when the light is so low. 25 POETRY Over her lo-waist jeans, her skin is bumpy and mauve like areola. A miserable lamprey, I’m behind her one row, soft for the part of her modesty that hangs. Koltyn waits in a leather jacket against the bricks. He holds a fine toothed comb in his hand, and his hair has been straightened. Jess meets him after class. She thinks he’s our age, but he’s only fifteen. SPINDLE Jackson Park gets so spindly in the night. It was Koltyn who pointed out the trees are in each other’s knots and necks. I heard him in his voice of squeezed smoke. ALI PINKNEY Embroidery on Photographs by Amanda Craig There is a rusty nail on the diseased oak near the entrance to the park, near the red tube slide and the picnic tables, where I’ve eaten Chinese take-out with my mother to hear the swings whinny with the draft. Last night there was a fire on the dog path. Koltyn has one foot on a blackened turtle shell with his other, he flops Jess to the mulch at the edge of the path. She laughs backward. Koltyn pulls her to the pebbles and tugs her thighs bare, her lo-waist jeans catch at her knees. She moves like a rash. Koltyn sucks scalp from his comb. The pebbles crunch like cardamom against her body. He holds her neck down. It slithers like an earthworm. He uses the fine-toothed comb on her insides. Her insides, staph pus snowballed back and forth. Her insides, a rot cactus pear broke. Her insides, a sound that makes me laugh like a fork crackles in a microwave because it pierces my guilt; A minnow on a cocktail spear. Koltyn looks into the spindles, Jess cannot see, I, a dart through the neck of a poison frog, the fleshy thud: A minnow is pinned to the oak at the entrance to the park. 26 PORTRAITS / VOLUME 11 / ISSUE 1 27 CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS OUTER SPACE “I don’t think [The Void] will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I’m an optimist. We will reach out to the stars.” - Stephen Hawking, interview with Daily Telegraph, 2001 In 1977, Carl Sagan and a team at NASA compiled The Golden Record, a gold-plated copper phonograph record that included greetings in 56 languages (incl. Whale), 90 minutes of music (from Bach to Chuck Berry), 116 images of Earth things (human cross-sections, math and science diagrams, landscapes, animals, culture, people having a good time, etc.), as well as the brain waves of a young woman in love. This collection was launched with The Voyager and was supposed to give whoever and whatever it found out there a good idea of what our planet is all about. That was the idea. This time, though, it’s about what we think of them, and it: our Great Celestial Backyard. Unfortunately, nothing has come to us with a box of its own things, its own space whales. Still, that doesn’t stop us. We explore the possibilities and others’ conceptions of it through academics, pop culture, stories, fear, philosophy, conspiracy theories. The list ends there because it doesn’t. It’s so much a part of all our lives that we often forget it: a fish in water. Or maybe you try to become an encyclopedia of space things, at your desk under your own to-scale, glow-in-the-dark galactic neighbourhood, pressed on with actual love. Maybe you watched Star Trek: TNG late one night with your father, you both rung-through with sleeplessness, and came down for breakfast the next morning with a sweatband over your eyes, just to impress him. Maybe the first time it really got to you was the last time you were ever able to touch drugs. Maybe, like so many, you have sort of forgotten. Well, don’t. Everything behind anything proliferates until it’s so much part of the question that it’s hard not to make art and write about it. And it can be so much fun. So here you go, earthling, finally: The Void Magazine does Outer Space. GUIDELINES Poetry: maximum 5 poems. Fiction and Nonfiction: 1200 words. Visual arts: 3-5 samples. En 1977, Carl Sagan et son équipe à la NASA compilèrent le Golden Record, un record en cuivre plaqué or qui comprenait des mots de bienvenue en 56 langues (incluant le Whale), 90 minutes de musique (de Bach à Chuck Berry), 116 images de choses sur Terre (coupes transversales humaines, diagrammes scientifiques et mathématiques, paysages, animaux, artefacts culturels, personnes heureuses, etc.) ainsi que les ondes cérébrales d’une jeune femme en amour. Cette compilation fut envoyée avec The Voyager et était supposée donner une bonne idée de notre planète à qui ou quoi que ce soit la trouverait. Enfin, c’était le projet. Cette fois-ci par contre, c’est à propos de ce qu’on pense d’eux, de ça: notre Grande Arrière-Cour Céleste. Malheureusement, aucune boîte ne nous en est venu en retour, avec ses propres choses, ses propres baleines cosmiques. Mais cela ne nous arrête pas. Nous explorons différentes possibilités et conceptions, à travers la pensée universitaire, la culture populaire, la peur, la philosophie, les théories de conspirations. La liste finit là, car elle ne finit pas. Cela fait tellement partie de notre vie que nous l’oublions souvent: un poisson dans l’eau. Peut-être essayez-vous de devenir une encyclopédie de l’espace, assis à votre bureau, sous un voisinage galactique brilliant dans le noir, à votre échelle et appliqué avec amour. Peut-être vous regardiez Star Trek: TNG tard une nuit avec votre père, tout deux essorés par le manque de sommeil, et descendez les escaliers pour déjeuner le lendemain matin, avec un bandeau sur les yeux juste pour l’impressioner. Peut-être la première fois que cela vous atteigna vraiment était la dernière fois que seriez jamais capable de toucher à de la drogue. Peut-être, comme tant d’autres, vous avez un peu oublié. Et bien, rappelez-vous. N’importe quoi derrière quoi que ce soit prolifère, jusqu’à ce que cela fasse tant partie de la question qu’il est difficile de ne pas en faire de l’art et d’en parler. Et cela peut être vraiment amusant. Alors voilà, terriens, finalement: Le Void se fait cosmique. 28 PORTRAITS / VOLUME 11 / ISSUE 1 THE VOID IS HIRING As some of our people will be leaving us to graduate and do whatever they’ll do, The Void Magazine will be filling the empty staff positions. The job will formally begin in the Fall/2013 semester, but apply now so that you can start learning the Void game while we are fully intact. Submit a CV with appropriate portfolios or reference works to [email protected] before February 1, 2013. Prior experienced is valued but unnecessary. POETRY EDITOR FICTION EDITOR Responsible, with the Editor-in-Chief, for garnering and selecting the poetry content of each issue. The Poetry Editor must have a developed sensibility and be prepared to execute a standard of quality with regards to accepting submissions. This person is also responsible for going through the editing process with selected submissions in preparation for publishing. Please send a CV along with a letter of intent. Responsible, with the Editor-in-Chief, for garnering and selecting the fiction content of each issue. The Fiction Editor must have a developed sensibility and be prepared to execute a standard of quality with regards to accepting submissions. This person is also responsible for going through the editing process with selected submissions in preparation for publishing. Please send a CV along with a letter of intent. NONFICTION EDITOR MANAGING EDITOR Responsible, with the Editor-in-Chief, for garnering and selecting the nonfiction content of each issue. The Nonfiction Editor must have a developed sensibility and be prepared to execute a standard of quality with regards to accepting submissions. This person is also responsible for going through the editing process with selected submissions in preparation for publishing. Please send a CV along with a letter of intent. Responsible for facilitating the ongoing conversation between the magazine and the organizations that may provide us with funding. This person may also be asked to handle some other financial and budgetary work. Please send a CV along with a letter of intent. COPY EDITOR The copyeditor works with the pieces selected for publication to edit for spelling, grammar, and style. Must have appropriate knowledge, a good eye for detail, and be able to follow a style guide. Please send a CV. 29