Shopping with Abe Lincoln by Jaret Sears

Shopping with Abe Lincoln
Jaret Sears

Abe, buddy, could you grab us a basket?
We won’t need a cart, we aren’t buying that much.

Where are you going? We…no… wait… no, we start over here.
Come back over here, don’t go to the deli, we don’t need anything there.

Ok… do you have that shopping list, Abe?

You forgot it? Where? I asked you in the car if you had it and you said you did.

Do you remember any of it?

You could remember the Gettysburg address, but you couldn’t remember a shopping list. Never mind, I think I remember most of it.

Hey. Whoa there. Abe, what are you doing?
Are you smuggling potatoes in your top hat? That’s illegal, Abe. Shoplifting is illegal.
And they called you “Honest Abe”. Ha. I laugh at that. I do.

Oh you were just putting them in there so you could weigh them easier?

Sure, ok. No, I believe you. Why are you giving me that look? Don’t give me that look.

Abe, look at this. Hormel chili is on sale. Ten cans for $10. That’s pretty good.
What? Well… yeah… I know. I know we don’t need it.

But I mean its nonperishable, so we could buy it now when it is on sale, and store it.

Abe, it’s not a stupid idea. That’s realistic. Fine, we won’t get it.
But when football season starts next month and you invite your pal Rathbone over,

Don’t ask me to make dip for you, cause I won’t, cause we won’t have chili.

Ok… we have to pick up Diet Coke. Not regular Coke. NOT regular, Abe.

You know what it does to your stomach, and I’m not going sit there feeding you TUMS. And you groan and you tell me never to let you get regular Coke again…

And then the next day, what do you do? You get regular Coke.

No. Freeze. Right now. What are you doing? You are holding regular Coke.

Put that down, get the Diet Coke. Just do it, Abe.

What else did we need? Anything… is this about it?

We’ve put a few things in our basket… we don’t need much else.

I don’t think so. But I just know that when we get home I am going to find the list,

And I’ll have missed something on it.

But oh well, whatever it is, I’ll pick it up after work tomorrow.

Ok, we don’t have that much stuff. So we’re not using a regular aisle.

Should we use the “Express Lane” or “Self-Checkout”?
You know what, the self-checkout always breaks when I use it, so we’ll just play it safe.

We’re going to use the “Express Lane”. We have ten items or fewer, right? Right?

Alright… ok… I’ll put this stuff on the conveyer belt.

No, you don’t need to help me, Abe. I can do this myself.

What are you doing? No, you aren’t getting that water bottle, put it back.

We have water in the car. I don't care if the car-water is warm. Put the water back, Abe.

No. Hey. Don’t put that on the conveyer belt. Get that off of there! Now! Abe!

Ok… fine… there you go, she scanned it. Too late, we bought it.

Now you have your water. Are you happy? You couldn’t just wait till we got to the car.

It’s funny that you could run an entire democracy “by the people”,

But you won’t listen to anyone else’s opinion while grocery shopping.

Whatever. I don’t make the money. It’s not my money. It’s yours. You can waste it.

What? Oh. I don’t have my “Shaw’s Card”. I didn’t bring my keys ‘cause you drove.

Abe, do you have your “Shaw’s Card”? No, you don’t? You don’t.

Abe Lincoln forgot his “Shaw’s Card”.

Red Sea by Kaylie McTiernan

Red Sea
by Kaylie McTiernan

Infinite water surrounds me,

The Azorean sunset's passion manifests itself,

The secret ocean hides the wind's whistling might,

Almost forgotten is the wildly jumping jerboa,

The arctic blue narwhal's unicorn-like majesty is concealed,

Dreams of the tranquil stream are distant,

An overwhelming desire surges,

The Red Sea flooded irises gaze back into mine,

Endless water envelops me,

Fiery winds break the ocean with whistling might,

The Venus Flytrap does not snap shut,

No graceful Siberian tiger perches, awaiting its prey,

A blood-red sunrise pierces,

No dream of the tranquil stream,

The Red Sea flooded irises devour mine.

Traffic by Alex Rasmussen

Traffic
by Alex Rasmussen

The cars all grind to a stop:

one can feel the pressure mount

in ripples through the pavement.

There is, of course, the usual mix of models:

the lumbering herds of Ford Explorers,

the fleet and solitary Dodge Stratuses.

And, of course, most idle

greasy unclean and festering

under the midday sun.

Coffee stains polka-dot every seat.

There is no hurry, no

scurrying through traffic lights,

no joyriding carful of teenagers.

There is no haze of exhaust fumes

through this dissipated air.

But in the breakdown lane

the stolen car with the burnt-out

headlights stalls, its abductor

in a panic with

manic groping sweaty fingers

twisting the impotent key

like the wrist of some

staunch deviant offender

in the ignition

sweating out the crawling, pricking barbs:

the brute caress of freedom.

Collapse. by Rose Pleuler

Collapse.
by Rose Pleuler

Sorry I left that pile of dust in the bath tub,

but this sort of thing comes on with very little warning.

Under the splinters of a hot shower on a morning

so cold that my hands were bruised a dull purple,

I could feel bits of me

harden like a clay shell beneath the heat

and begin tighten and tighten on me

as it dried, until even the slight twitch of my wrist

caused tearing up the seams of my body,

making way for deeper cracks

that echoed redness

and sectioned my skin off into sharp platelets

that scraped against each other,

each section a piece to an ancient mechanism

that produced the same metal shards,

sliding into dry piles on the cold porcelain,

that you left in a clump at the back of my throat.

The metal taste in my mouth was getting strong,

and I'm sorry for when I say

I would rather be hardened, tightened, dried, torn, cracked, and scraped,

than have you

repair me.

Imbedded by Lucy Morgan

Imbedded
by Lucy Morgan

Ruth has been waking up in the same bed on top of the same sheets for decades and she's been heart broken for almost as long, but on this Thursday morning she still startles awake with the expectation that a man will be asleep in the space next to her, and of course she is disappointed, so she walks quickly out of her bedroom to the immediate kitchen where the coffee she prepared the night before waits to meet the warmth of her dry throat and sticky morning teeth, swallows, and quickly hurries out the front door to the immediate driveway where her blue pickup truck is parked, forces the ignition to turn, and makes her way down a long dirt road until she reaches the only gas station in Rumney, New Hampshire - the one where she spent most summer nights working as a teenager, the one she inherited from the owner when he died of old age- and after she unlocks the front door she waits a moment before turning on the lights but when she does she finds that the shelves are stocked just as they were the day before, so she plants her feet behind the cash register and waits for it to be 7am, but the first customer turns out to be someone who doesn't feel intimidated by Closed Sign; it turns out to be Bill's son, the Bill who died in his vegetable garden at age forty-eight, and Ruth startles at the sight of his old face on the young boy as he says hi, asks if she remembers him, embraces her, and explains that he's been living about five hours away ever since things went wrong, and that he's leaving for college in the big city tomorrow morning, so he thought it might be good for him to visit Rumney one last time before he goes, and Ruth immediately thinks of her bed sheets and for the first time in her life she knows what is in store for her so she turns the Closed Sign on the door to Open, says goodbye to the boy, and kisses him hard on the mouth.

Introducing: The Elicitor: Volume 22: 2007/2008

Behold the fruits of our labors!
~
Below you will find the pages of the 2007/2008 Elicitor. Click on the images to investigate the texts and to scrutinize the photographs.

Read in the paginated order. Or read randomly. Up to you, really.

Page 1 (cover page; photograph by Bryanna Porter)
Page 2 (staff listing and editorial)
Page 3 (poems by Felicia Lowe and Willie Norris)
Page 4 (poem by Lia Parisi)
Page 5 (photograph by Felicia Lowe)
Page 6 (photograph by Juliann Flaherty)
Page 7 (prose by Emily daSilva; photograph by Jessica Russ)
Page 8 (photographs by Chad Williams, Brianna Aloisio, Felicia DaRosa, Kayla Silva, Jessica Russ, Kathy Kaity, and Sara Pardo)
Page 9 (images by Heather Lopes, Stacia Pinegar, and Jessica Russ)
Page 10 (photographs by Lucy Morgan)
Page 11 (play by Allie Lees)
Page 12 (back cover page; photograph by Liam Anastasia-Murphy)

Be astonished. Be amazed. (But don't be too hard on us for the typos. We are still learning.)
~
Hard copies of volume 22: 2007/2008 will be available in room 2207 at Gloucester High School starting June 10.

Elicitor * Volume 22 * 2007/2008 * Page 1