The Resurrection

LIBERTAS ressurection

VOL. 23, NO. 1

SATREBIL A Note from the Dear Davidson,

Editors...

It has been too damn long.

Hello, and thank you for picking up this sort of newspaper/sort of magazine/sort of art piece.

We haven’t seen a printed Libertas since spring of 2020 when we all know what went down. But we are back!

It’s been a wild four months. Elsah James took over as Editor-in-Chief at the beginning of the 2022-3 Fall Semester wondering how she was going to put together a brand new staff of fiction and poetry editors, layout designers, and media team. One day, at a water fountain on thirdfloor Chambers, she asked Max Shackelford to join her as Co-Editor-In-Chief. Then, they got to work. The rest of the story is a rush of boring meetings and details and meetings and messages and meetings.

One of our first tasks after recruiting staff was settling on a theme for our first issue back. We wanted to be as eye-catching as the many editions of Libertas plastered to the walls of our Union office, as edgy as a sharp cliff at the top of some Appalachian Mountain, and as poetic as the writing Davidson students have to offer. We came up with ‘Resurrection.’ We don’t know that the theme met our ridiculous standards, but we think it is fitting.

We all deserve a second chance, always. And that’s what this semester has been for Libertas. A second chance at art, at beauty, at life. Resurrection captures the movement of this magazine from vibrancy to absence to rebirth, which we know does not guarantee a return to what was before. But if we can render this incipient magazine, which lies under the name and in the shadow of a past giant, into some form capturing the charm, the vision, the madness, the hope, the depth, the imagination, the wit, and all the rest, then we will cherish the fruits of our labor.

For the first time in a while but certainly not the last, thank you for reading,

Elsah James and Max Shackelford

LIBERTAS December 2022 Cover

Ainsley Richardson

Resurrection Photography

3

Mahrle Siddall Ashley Allushuski

Untitled

4

Caroline Ewing

Nekyia

5

Andrew Tinaz

Art

7

Ashley Allushuski

Mermaid Cliff

8

Selin Deniz Akdogan

Knot What Wee’d Expect Upon Returning

9

Andre Phillips

Sugar or Spice It’s Nice to Smell Nice

11

Erin Price

Left I Must Live with You Between Grave and Sky

12

Quinn Benson Frank Edong’a

A Supermarket in California with Allen Ginsberg

13

Elsah James

Photography

14

Saskia Sheinkman

Resurrection Mahrle Siddall

Whenever I look up at a brilliant green canopy, I imagine myself as a child. Climbing whatever trees had branches close to the ground so my small body could take the initial step. The bark would scrape my limbs as I surpassed the entangled branches. But I paid no mind, for my mother would cover my wounds with bandages.

The band aids that covered my legs served as badges of honor for my adventure. When I reached the top, I would look at the untouched land that surrounded me. Watching as the golden grass swayed in the wind and the glow of the setting sun illuminated the forest. I would sit up there for hours until the sun was swallowed by the horizon, and the indigo haze of dusk would remind me to venture back home.

At some point I became too much for the brittle branches of the red pine and they would snap under my feet.

Unfit for an adolescent. The forest was no longer my domain and suddenly being lady-like was more important than being a child. I forgave the trees for not supporting my weight and exchanged them for the stability of the ground. Occasionally I would gaze at the winding limbs and think how comfortable it would be to fit into a nook created by branches. I would make plans to come back late at night when I wouldn’t have to worry about the presence of others, but it seemed that I was never alone. Much unlike home.

It wasn’t until I took a walk alone through the forest of my childhood that I saw a magnificent oak among the swarm of the red pine. Its thick branches were surely enough to support my weight. I remembered seeing the oak as a child and being disappointed that I couldn’t reach the tall branches. I looked up to the canopy and saw golden light peeking through the green and decided to climb. I climbed and climbed until my limbs grew tired.

Out of breath, I took in what was around me. Even though the horizon was sterile with sleek buildings and a perfect grid of streets, the forest remained. The asphalt that covered the swaying grass created a line between the natural world from the one we created. Even though the changes in landscape shocked me, my eyes were drawn to a sapling sprouting not far from the asphalt. Its tiny leaves were reaching toward the sun. I knew that in time, it would grow to overtake its surroundings. Its roots would soon become stronger than the man-made barrier, causing it to raise and crack.

BOY IN BED

Nekyia Andrew Tinaz I lay dormant, plastered against the walls of a sew-

amongst the lives of those fruitful. Condemned to remain

er. My chest settled with pressure as a blunt soreness

enveloped by darkness, for a step too close to a radi-

parades about my side. Bones pressed against the con-

ant lamppost, a gaze upwards at the twinkle of the stars

crete whose stench, strikingly rotten, fills my sinuses. This will set my eyes ablaze. Light hurts me. Thus, for the last prison of mine, this encasement within a world of shad-

three, lengthy years, I have watched many, shrouded in

ows that I am confined to, for as a Shadow, I am defined.

darkness. Coworkers and employers. Friends and confi-

The shadow of a Seducer, a Gambler, a Risk-Taker,

dants. All who fragmented excitement, pouring pleasure

and a Father.

My life is marginally expounded, for it is one of blindness. As days pass, the sun, that ever enforcing

piece-by-piece into my corpse long before I perished.

Sporting shallow light that they now take for granted.

Well, I’ve perished and it all amassed to nothing.

beam, burns my flesh and casts me back to my domi-

Three years forgotten by all except … perhaps two. Yes.

cile. Perhaps the night is my domain then? No, for the

Two. How could I have forgotten the two to carry me

moon and the stars and the lamps of the street smolder

through this cataclysmic existence and remember me?

me. Such everlasting darkness and effervescent suffer-

Two who may grasp onto their memory of me, perhaps

ing brought by my own hand. NO! Rather by the twisted

make me tangible. I can envision it. Their brown eyes

hands of fate. By the smoke’s talons, whose claws dug

must have matured in the time I’ve been gone. Perhaps

through my throat and whose spit filled my lungs. How I

hers to a deeper shade, oak-like, while his grew brighter.

long for the taste now; of the smoke’s suffocation upon

Their eyes of Umber and Caramel. Two children born

my ever-tightening breath.

orderly to a chaotic world. So chaotic … I pause and pray

Who am I, then? I can tell you who I was, for my

their eyes grow firm as the barks of trees. I pray for their

identity does not walk alongside me but rather has seated

preparation and strength on the day their mother wilts

itself at my death. I suppose I was an individual. Within a

beneath a frigid, sorrowful winter.

sea of ego, I cast my life. A void so deep, drowning me,

My children. How I miss you. How I desire to look

padding my lungs, choking my breath as the water ob-

upon you with pride, praying for autumn’s overcast to

scured my vision with illusions of immortality. I wanted to

obstruct the sky. Clouds cruise past the moonlight whose

live longer in this euphoric world. Prolong my existence

gaze casts me back. I curse the lights of the street. Their

… no … my experience of the rapid, passing waves. The

brilliance holds our house and cradles it in light, prevent-

Sun’s light, so beautiful, peaked through the deep which

ing our reunion. Bathing it and protecting you … from me?

now beams down and boils my skin.

Do you need protection from me?

I spent little time with my children and had taken

Please, my children. I wish no ill. I wish nothing but

time away from my wife. You ask me whether I loved my

to bask in the light and to hold you once more. To shine

family, and I plead yes, grasping out towards the dark

my affection upon your hearts and imprint myself upon

and praying I find some relief. Yet, no relief. For so long,

your skulls. Ah! Yet I see it!

I have been condemned to spectate as a bystander

An Opportunity to be together. The clouds obscure the moon’s view as the lights, beaming from the street, have gone out. It’s perfect. I squeeze through the sewer’s opening, abandoning my home which sits just before your front lawn. I race across misted grass whose droplets would shimmer on so many other nights. My footsteps,

“Michael. Why do you dream with spite? Do you resent me? Why do you cry so forcefully?”

“Rosa. Why do you frown? Do you not think of me fondly? Do you forget me?” “Why aren’t there pictures?

MY CHILDREN WHERE ARE THE PICTURES? Where

silent upon pavement, roll up those steps. My hand thrusts are the drawings of me? The letters to me? I can see you! through the front door’s keyhole as its brass scrapes upon my skin. My pain is profuse, yet I leave no mark. I have neither blood nor skin to drip. I press my body completely through for I am driven to you, my children. I stagger upwards and stumble into the hallway, marred to look for… well…myself. Photos encased in darkly rimmed frames.

Weddings, Birthdays, Recitals. Something … some marks

I can hear you! Please! Please don’t forget me!”

I stumble about frantically searching. Perhaps in their dreams there is me but … nothing more? I need something to place my faith into. Something physical.

I need … My eyes land upon it. A photo of me reclined watching TV. This … This one memory. This … would

I made. Yet I am absent. Spilling drunkenly across the

rattle around their minds for the rest of their lives … I …

living room, I see no signs. None of me. Please. Lord

I don’t want that. I want them to flourish. To look upon

Please! Have they forgotten me? Have they left me be-

life contrastingly. I taught them that … I taught them well,

neath that hallowed ground?

right? My burned flesh stinks only to me. My skin sheds,

No semblance of me. I … I do not exist. My eyes do

pattering upon the wooden floor. I heard it. I hear my

not even gaze back at me in mirrors, for even they have

breathing, my struggle to get to you! You can’t appreciate

betrayed me. I remember their rooms. They are upstairs.

it. You won’t know that my tears, though silent, they only

I dash as the lights of passing cars dagger through win-

shed for you. So I can say which I may only perceive, “I’m

dows, slicing across my stomach. My guts exposed, yet

sorry … I’m sorry I was a bad father and cannot give you

I keep going. To the stairs I climb. A gentle ceiling light

more time.” The Sun’s rising fire drags me back towards

blocks the top and I hug the wall as I approach. It bars me

the sewers. Down to the world untouched, blind to even

from you. I will myself through. My back burns as the light

me. Know, my children, that I etch my struggle into my

blazes across it. “I am so close”, I murmur to myself.

new home’s walls so it is to be near you. So that if you

Air vents, dusty, dank, and cobweb-covered, lash out

ever wander, know I will be with you. Know that I, at ev-

at my face. I keep crawling until … Yes! There they are!

ery moment, every waking second, will attempt to imprint

Michael! Rosa! My sweet children. I reach my hand out

myself upon your skulls. I long to be restless, not dormant.

to cup their faces and to let them know I’m here. This is fu- My children, I need you … for your memory of me … I tile. I lay kisses upon their foreheads that they cannot feel. suppose it renews me.

Mermaid Cliff

She was a little girl with hopes reaching the blue sky when

A few years after that, she had heard two words her father had whispered to her uncle. The wretched hope, which’s existence she was first asked. Since then, whenever she’d been asked what she she was not even aware of until that moment, bid farewell to her wanted to be when she grew up, her answer not once has changed. I soul. Found dead. And she sobbed like all the children who lost want to be a mermaid. their mothers for the rest of their times. People who hang on to the false hope of believing that the person they love is still breathing She shivered at the coldness of the stone she was sitting on. It even though they are far away, one day wake up from the illusion was sunny, but she wasn’t able to feel any warmth. The anklet on her and crash to the ground. She, too, had crashed to the ground and slender left ankle tinkled softly with every swing of her foot. Her hair dropped the first piece of her soul there. danced gracefully with the gentle touch of the wind. There was no sound but the sound of the wind and the sea extending beneath her Years passed and she fell in love. This beautiful fatality, feet, yet she could hear fragrant songs. Majestic peaks covered with more impressive in that loneliness, seemed to be quite helpful in a frantic luxuriance of vegetation were stretched from horizon to healing the habitual gloom left by her mother. It had taken over horizon. She was wearing a dress whiter than the large cotton fields. her whole body in a way she could not describe, overwhelming her She was so beautiful and her heart was so heavy that she wanted to with an absolute force. But this feeling, as delightful and heavenly give her whole heart to the wind that swept through her fingertips. as the dust that shines in the sunlight, resulted in such devastaShe was tired, and she was hiding a broken smile in her palm. For tion and disappointment that she swore never to fall in love again. the first time, she wasn’t thinking as her eyes shimmered on the And while she was tearing this feeling away from her forever, huge trembling skirt of the bluest dress with white ends, wrapped around pieces of her soul were torn away with it. the dark rocks below. The world was far, far away - it had ceased to exist at that moment, with all its ambitions and responsibilities, Throughout her life, whenever she tried in a piteous desits disasters and prosperities, its worries and despairs, its joys and peration to fill the voids of her soul, her soul was further torn exultations. They were no concern of hers anymore, they were just apart. She never managed to put herself before others in the cona humor which grieves the heart, and she was drifting idly on the sistently selfish world. She stubbornly stayed pure and gold in this waves of numbness. menagerie of proud hypocrites and fools, of uninteresting and bad She didn’t have much memory of her mother. Over time, she had forgotten her mother’s face, absent from the faded photographs and shrouded in the fog of her mind. As she got older she realized that the word mother lost the meaning in her life. No one would talk about her mother, as if uttering her name would let a dreary curse loose. For this reason, she clung to a few small memories that she vaguely remembered in order to relieve the longing for a mother that burned like a wildfire in every child. The most vivid of these memories was the last time she saw her mother.

people, of pernicious narcissists. She was frail and naive - it was inevitable for hurt to be inflicted. She herself knew that she was frail and naive. However, she didn’t know how to fix herself. Each time she was pained, she cried, pathetically. When she learned not to cry, there was only one thing left to do.

It was silent and pleasant and peaceful under the vast spread of the giant roof, and life was perfect again. The calm left behind by the catastrophic storm was surrounding her. With the silence of a pair of feet tiptoeing away, she grew astonishingly old, even before the fine troubled lines could map her forehead. She “Where are you going?” I whispered. She stopped, and slow- wanted a new life. On the cliff edge, she opened her eyes for the ly turned around. The fire in her eyes was extinguished. Her face last time to that view. The last time she saw the blue, the last time shone like an angel in the moonlight. There was a divine breeze in she heard the wave and the last time she felt the wind. It was the her presence. It was like a dream. So much so that I could never be last time she had cried on the edge of that cliff, and the last time sure of the reality of that moment. It was such a moment that the she had laughed. For the last time she whispered, I want to be a concepts of imagination and reality had exhausted their meanings. mermaid. That day a mermaid fell from the sky. During all the I had a thin ache in my heart. Even with that meaningless, naive times following, people who made the mistake of going to that and depraved heart, even with that child heart, I felt her pain. The cliff for the beauty of its picturesque sight never realized that the constant pain that her wounds inflicted on her. What was left of her sky on top of that cliff was different. They could not see the sorlife? Despite the millions of tunes playing in my mind at the same row that hovered the air, could not hear the words I want to be time, I was buried in my own silence. I had so much to speak, but a mermaid echoing on the rocks, could not comprehend the life words could not pass through the tightly shut doors of my heart. It suspended above the deep water. Mermaids exist and the endless never had. I had never actually spoken in my brief life. I thought I blues are always full of them. was talking because she understood me. I didn’t speak at that moment and she understood me for the last time. She surrounded me Selin Deniz Akdogan with her eyes and kissed me for the last time with her smile. She apologized without any words. She was the only one in this world to apologize to me. I couldn’t even breathe when she turned around and walked away. I was not in control of my body, it was much later that I even realized I was crying. In the forest, in front of that burning hospital, I saw in her all the pain, all the good and all the bad in the world. They called her the devil. I was young. I couldn’t say anything. I just closed my eyes and grieved her.

Andre Phillips The boy led his grandpa deep into the woods, towards the sound of rushing water, away from the sounds of rushing people. When they first began their hike, they heard the bustling of cars louder than the rustling of leaves, the honking of horns louder than the honking of geese, the whirring of machines louder than the whirring of insect wings. Now all they could hear was flowing water.

Each side of the trail was heavily vegetated by knotweeds, which — with their thick, bamboo-like stalks, wide leaves, and roots so robust that they seemed like subterranean trunks — were considered invasive to the area. Eventually the boy and his grandpa arrived at a spot where a rock stretched out into the river. Knotweed still grew to their right, but to their left was the unhindered sight of the rock and the river.

“Here it is! My favorite spot in the woods.” exclaimed the boy, whose name was Delo.

“It is nice here,” remarked his grandpa, “just a bit sad.”

“Sad? Huh.” Delo sat down on the rock,

placing his hands behind him as support.

A small smile stretched across his face as he gazed out at the river. The smile faded when he glanced to his right and saw the knotweeds.

All his life, Delo had lived in Keyston, a small, historic town that had been built along the Lenni river. It was a quiet town. In the past, each home had about an acre of land, and the forests were still mostly intact. Until recently, the town had not changed much. But that was before the invasion.

In recent years, a flood of city people had begun to erode Keyston’s land and its tranquility. Intensive construction operations destroyed the forests and disrupted the silence. New homogenous houses and hypermarkets blemished the town’s once unique aura. Local businesses were overtaken by the self-proclaimed economically educated city-comers. The local government had become dominated by ex-urban bureaucrats, who used their power to avoid assimilation and change Keyston to their ideal, suburban paradise.

The knotweeds reminded Delo

of this phenomenon, this sort of countryside gentrification. When the city people came, they constructed houses so close together that they resembled the dense configuration of knotweed colonies When the city people came, they built standardized structures that cultivated a monoculture akin to the acres of knotweeds in the riparian forest. When the city people came, they embodied an air of untrustworthiness that was like the leaves of the knotweed which covered any visibility of the forest beyond the trail.

Delo shuddered, letting his head fall limply. “I hate the knotweed,” he muttered to himself.

“So you don’t know the knotweeds yet,” murmured his grandpa.

“Huh? Know the knotweeds?” scoffed Delo.

Delo, who had passionately researched Japanese Knotweed for school, began listing out superficial facts about how knotweed is an “invasive species” and how it has thick roots called rhizomes and how those rhizomes… His grandpa did not care to listen, having

already heard Delo rant about the knotweed on the way to the river. Instead, the grandpa looked towards the mass of vegetation to his right: a green, semipermeable wall of leafy stems reaching 6ft high. He scrutinized these stems for a few minutes: seeming to gather information by listening to the bending stalks and rustling leaves, peering deeply into the green amalgamation as if it had something to say to him.

The knotweeds told the grandpa what search engines couldn’t tell Delo: “We are the ones who grow on the sides of volcanic mountains,” the knotweeds whispered as they swayed in the wind.

“The ones who bring life to the flakey ash. The ones who live unobstructed by obsidian. When the wind blows, soot covers our leaves, but that does not stop us from seeing the light. When the earth shifts, our stems bear the barrage of rocks to follow, and our roots remain steadfast. We are not from here, but we like it here, because life is easier here.”

After listening to the knotweeds’ tale, the grandpa recounted, “The knotweeds need this sort of life. Things are less busy for them, things are easier.”

“Well they shouldn’t be here. They just take everything over. And it’s not fair for the other plants,” grumpily replied Delo.

“What is so bad about them having an easier life? When life is hard for us, we move. We go to some place where we think we’ll be happier. That’s why me and you are here right now.” The grandpa leaned back and smiled as Delo had earlier, reminiscing about when he and his family first moved from the city to Keyston. He recalled how he longed for somewhere more peaceful or friendly or beautiful, somewhere with a lighter burden. He recalled how he found what he was looking for in Keyston.

Keyston was a place where the world smiled back. The corners of the forest arched upward like dimples, the ripples of the river seemed to grin, the people emanated elation. Even with the invasion of city people, the grandpa relished in Keyston’s blissful charm.

Everyone living in Keyston wanted to be there; that’s what made it so special to the grandpa.

“I moved here 34 years ago and look at how well our family has done!” the grandpa chuckled, “Why can’t plants

do the same as us?”

“Well when you moved, you didn’t make everyone else move. The knotweeds make all the other plants move and the land change,” Delo argued.

“Well I think the knotweeds want to be here more than the other plants, so they grow back quicker,” his grandpa insisted.

“But don’t they just create another unhappy environment for themselves by doing that?”

The grandpa said nothing. He slouched forward, resting his head on his arms to gaze at the river. He stared at one particular section where an anomalous ripple pattern kept forming over and over again in the same spot. The ripple was occasionally interrupted by leaves or branches floating down the river. But once those interruptions had drifted away, the ripple returned to its original configuration.

“The knotweeds won’t be here much longer,” murmured the grandpa.

“So what? Can’t they at least leave some space for others while they’re here?”

“Maybe they want to,” said the grandpa, his stature beginning to stoop.

The grandpa turned towards the knotweeds again. Despite their vivacious green glow, the knotweed stems seemed to droop. One knotweed drooped as if hanging its head in shame. Another drooped as if it was looking for something lost. Yet another drooped as if it was lamenting a loss. The grandpa got up and walked toward the cluster of cowardly looking knotweeds. He looked towards the ground where there was a recently snapped stem. Sorrowfully, he knelt down to examine the stalk more closely. It was still perfectly green, but the inside was hollow.

“Oh poor knotweed,” he murmured, “You just have to keep coming back.”

Sugar or Spice it’s Nice to Smell Nice Erin Price

One time, I met Ms. NC at the fairground That night, I dreamt she placed a bomb in my stomach She said she’d watch, she’d know if I talked and so, I began to understand my surveillant subconscious Close up, I lashed at masqued girls’ clumped lashes Closed up, I salivated at their sweet potion Quaking cake face, I asked what is that Oh me? VS Warm Sugar Cookie.

Come, walk into mist no. 5 And then, we all Judy Bloomed...

All over the hallway.

Heh, ah excuse me, we were fermenting there.

It felt like poolside mom’s-night sangria It smelt like when you stand up way too fast My brain became all hypertonic come now, socratic-stall seminar if you please, walk me to class A note, once wrote me “you don’t know your power” OH MY pride at our group show-and-tell catty calls We had all thought it’s nice to be crushed so rushed, too distilled, my happiness caramelized into caution My skin ran dry from powders Cinnamon challennnnge! hgueeeh! I gagged on spoons full of compromises Pick up, benefit of the doubt boomranged I felt lucky Luck had called me a feminist Now made brittle, I got a clean break, Escapes! Over spritz’ dew I forget it just feels nice to smell nice And then, walks in my marsupial roommate And now, we incubate in our lavender womb, we build out sense while with-in-scents we walk in her spritzes of Happy, Clinique’s signature fragrance.

A crush once wrote to me that “you don’t know your power.”

Hah, and I’m starting to think that is not true

Left. Between Grave and Sky

Quinn Benson

To witness the reaction to your death Is to know the legacy you had It's to grapple with what should be intangible That either you were lost in emotional turbulence Or you were sought like a destination That either you were at buried underneath the flower: Where the wherewithal of your colleagues bars them from entering Or you were the dandelion They always searched for Where death isn't the end of your life Rather it's the beginning of your family's new stories Yet maybe reincarnation is not the act of seeing your own self Or reforming in a different being Maybe we are all reincarnated, Just because we left an impact.

- 2nd Libs North Corridor, Davidson, NC. October 24th, 2022

Frank Edong’a

Winds blow and erase your face from the sand; I draw. Again. And again. And again.

The Shooting Star delays, I wait in the cold gloom for that epiphany And when I see, I gasp and hope my heart steers on; I cherish the sobs from my eyes— broken reflections of you fetched from dark-bottom bowls; I must grieve, I know, For in that is a constant living dying you.

A child, you showed me the rising moon, full, glittering life in the dry of the night But there was no moon some days “It is under,” You said, “It will rise soon.”

I held my patience.

And so there was moon some days— Half, crooked, full And there was your finger, guiding my eye.

You did not have to go under to emerge, Like seeds shooting only from buried depths; I feel the light of your extinguished flame more now— You are no more, you are alive. And pain, Like sight, I offer outward and within, Pain, a birthright of our mutual contract For which the world prescribes I must bury you again; Pain, I have longed for you.

I must believe in the resurrection One which I wait all day long, all night long; Such things as communion of spirits Beyond this corporeal essence But until then, my Janus. Until then I must live with you between grave and sky.

In A Supermarket in California with Allen Ginsberg Based on the Poem A Supermarket in California by Allen Ginsberg

Elsah James Grocery List: ● 3 Avocados ● Cherry Tomatoes.

The thoughts I have of you tonight, as I hurry from my car towards the Whole Foods entrance, hot pink flip flops slapping the cracked concrete. The full moon is tucked behind street lamps, and moths swarm the bulbs in a starving frenzy. I squint up at the moon; the moon squints back, silently judging. I left the honey glaze on the stove for my pork chop recipe. It’s just missing ● 2 cloves of garlic.

If I don’t hurry, the glaze will burn and the whole dinner party will be ruined.

I walk under the trees with a headache as regret settles into my joints. I should have never offered to cook. They’ll be at the house soon, and all I have is a glaze.

I walk into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of my enumerations. I pull up this very list, dragging it from the depths of my notes app where it cowers behind a shattered iPhone screen. I need a ● Side salad ● Dessert? ● Pork chops.

Worst of all, I have no pork chops to go in my honey glaze pork chops. The Whole Foods is bright and sterile. In my hungry fatigue, the noise of the fans muddles with the voices of shoppers. Fluorescent lights and pyramids of fruit consume me.

I grab a cart and begin to weave past whole families shopping at night. ● Peaches and penumbras!

I pass aisles of husbands and wives hunting for ● Non-gmo bananas.

I make it to the avocados in record time. The waxy peels glisten green. I wrestle with the plastic bag, dropping in three avocados the size of my hand, and continue down my list. An audience gathers to watch a baby tantrum in the tomatoes, arms flailing dangerously close to the ripe fruit. The rows of red reflect the fluorescent lights like sunburnt cheeks. Picturing the baby knocking down the pyramid, red guts splattered across the tiled floor, I steer my cart to avoid the tantrum. The salad will be fine without cherry tomatoes. ● Cherry tomatoes ● Soy sauce ● Spinach The spinach is sweating under the mister, timer clicking at me. I grab the nearest bundle but seeing the way the greens droop, I put it back. There is plenty of spinach, I can pick the very best. Produce abounds in a land of plenty. Plenty of drought. Plenty of chemicals piped into food. Plenty of freezer meals and freezer burn. I need to go to the frozen section next. I’m frozen in time while everyone around me grows up and creates a family.

And all I have is my dinner half missing and half burning. And they’re expecting a meal when they arrive. I need to get out of the produce section. ● 1 hallucination It’s not until I make it to the back of the store that I see you, Allen Ginsberg, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys. Bespectacled and murmuring. Allen’s beard points a million directions, his tie askew. He has a book

tucked under his arm, just how I imagined him in high school English class, straight out of the Beat generation. I can’t remember when he died, but I remember learning that he was dead. He pauses right where I need to get the ● Pork chops.

I study you as I approach the pork section. Everyone else walks past, shrugging off the unusual Santa Monica characters, but I recognize you. Gingerly, you reach in and grab a styrofoam parcel. The saran wrap seems to laugh, reflecting in the glass door. Allen Ginsberg grabs pork chops. The last package of pork chops.

“Excuse me,” I say, “Did you just grab the last pork chops?”

You turn, looking past me instead of at me. “You see him, don’t you?” He points to the space behind me. “Walt Whitman is in front of the chicken.”

I turn, there’s no one there. I’m alone in the aisle. I swallow both pride and panic. I need those pork chops.

“I’m really sorry to bother you, but I am in the middle of cooking honey garlic pork chops and I made it all the way through the glaze before realizing I didn’t have pork chops and I left the glaze on the stove and I have guests coming over in like thirty minutes and those are the last pork chops in the store.” I take a breath.

“Is there any chance I could have the ones you just grabbed?”

“I picked them up first,” the man says.

“I really need them.”

His eyes dart between the empty space and me. He opens his mouth, then closes it again. When he speaks, I am unsure if it’s meant for me.

“Answer me this,” Allen says.

“Okay.”

“Who killed the pork chops?”

I hesitate. Calculating. “The farmer, I guess.”

You frown. Turning to the empty space next to me, “And who do you think, Walt?” Allen asks the space where I suppose Walt Whitman is standing, though I see only my own reflection in the refrigerator glass. After a moment of silence, Ginsberg nods, as if happy with the answer of the dead poet’s ghost. ● “America.”

Allen walks toward me. I reach out to accept the pork chops, but he doesn’t give them to me. Instead, he continues down the aisle, beckoning for me to follow. Out of curiosity and desperation, I do.

Bewildered, I ask one more time, “Can I please have the pork chops?”

“Whitman and I are having them.”

I want to scream that there is no one else in the aisle, that I have a pot sitting on the stove that could burn any second. We wander in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans. I’m right on his heels. He never once passes by the cashier. I watch him watch the space in front of him intently. He stares into the back of Walt Whitman’s head.

I’m nearly running to keep up, but then Ginsberg snaps out of his stare. Instead, he shops for images, soaking in every ounce of the Whole Foods. In his solitude, he picks up various items. He reads the label on the ● Canned corn.

He’s amused by the ● Artichokes ● And the Green grapes,

Which he plucks from the vine and plops into his mouth. I follow back around to the produce side of Whole Foods. Back into the crowd of vegans, vegetarians, and wannabe models in the seasonal vegetable aisle. Would they see him? Would they stop him from taking their dinner? Should I reach for someone to help me? I follow Allen Ginsberg as he follows Walt Whitman around the Whole Foods. I’m absurd. I’m helpless. My dinner menu goes down the drain with my sanity. My house is probably burning to the ground at this moment.

I’m going to starve and I’m going to have nowhere to sleep and everyone is going to hate me for not having anything for them to eat at dinner. I’m craving ● Oreos.

The one food that solves everything. I risk looking away from Allen for a moment as I grab the impulse buy off the shelf. I turn back just as he ducks away from the food.

Allen completes his odyssey in the supermarket. He leaves Circe with no pork to eat on her island. He pays for nothing, walking straight to the sliding doors. I’m following. I will steal these oreos. I’ll do anything to catch up to this man. I debate wrestling the pork chops out of his hands.

He turns. It’s like he heard my thoughts. I stop. He points at me with a nail chewed down to the quick. I open my mouth, but he cuts me off.

“Are you my angel?”

Editorial Editors in Chief

Copy Editors

Fiction Editors

Poetry Editors

Layout Editors

Publicity Team

Elsah James Max Shackelford Emma Anglin Caroline Redesky Ashley Allushki Katie Forrester Bianca Hassan Andre Phillips Andrew Tinaz Flora Konz Phoebe Anderson Eliana Burgin Erin Price Savvanah Vonesh Audrey Bohlin Avani Damidi Emma Huff Gretchen Upton Gabriel Wilson Emma Anglin Audrey Bohlin Mahrle Siddall