Private by Libertas Magazine

LIBERTAS

V o l . 20 , n o. 2

the private issue

SATREBIL editorial EDITORS IN CHIEF Jordan Luebkemann & Will Reese POETRY Rachel Beeton & Tom James FICTION Tim Rauen & Meg Mendenhall NOT FICTION Ben Wiley NOT FILM Claire Samuels MUSIC Michael DeSimone TRANSLATION Katie Kalivoda & Graham Whittington ART Vera Schulman & Dani Steely

Contributors Sarah Elizabeth Cornejo, Eleanor Yarboro, Scott Walker Cunningham, Elizabeth Welliver, Aminata Dumbuya, Katie Gomulkiewicz, Samantha Gowing, Sam Schafer, Genevieve Rowe, Madeline Parker, Jordan Luebkemann, Ethan Whitener, Graham Marema, Tom James, Jackson MauzĂŠ, James Mersol, Jack Goffinet, Charles Pennell, Amos McCandless, Michael DeSimone, The Artfully Nude Libertas belongs to the students of Davidson College. Contact the editors at libertas@davidson.edu

special thanks to. .. Faculty Advisors: Paul Miller, Scott Denham (emeritus), Zoran Kuzmanovich (emeritus), Ann Fox (emeritus) Previous Editors: Emily Romeyn, Vincent Weir, Mike Scarbo, Vic Brand, Ann Culp, Erin Smith, Scott Geiger, James Everett, Catherine Walker, Elizabeth Burkhead, Chris Cantanese, Kate Wiseman, Lila Allen, Jessica Malordy, Nina Hawley, Kate Kelly, Zoe Balaconis, Rebecca Hawk, and Hannah Wright Founder: Zac Lacy visit us online: sites.davidson.edu/libertas

LIBERTAS P R I V A T E A p r i l 9, 2 0 1 4 Sarah Elizabeth Cornejo

Grounds for Divorce

Eleanor Yarboro Scott Walker Cunningham Sarah Elizabeth Cornejo

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A Story Sitting in a McDonald’s-Gas Station Combo Art

Elizabeth Welliver Aminata Dumbuya Sarah Elizabeth Cornejo

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the other genesis The Topos of Un-Naming Art

Katie Gomulkiewicz Samantha Gowing Sam Schafer

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For Abby Disapearing Act, in Three Frames Art

Genevieve Rowe Madeline Parker Jordan Luebkemann

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Kinks TheHair in Our Shower Art

Ethan Whitener Graham Marema Jordan Luebkemann

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Poems About Wood IV Antenna Art

Tom James Sarah Elizabeth Cornejo

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The Battle of Stalingrad Art

Jackson Mauzé Scott Walker Cunningham

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Warzone Art

James Mersol Jack Goffinet

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My Love for You is Like a Blog 001066

Charles Pennell Amos McCandless

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Memo: The Privatization of PBS NO TITLE

Michael DeSimone

#Michael’s Relevant Music Picks

The Artfully Nude

L(ass)t Word

featured artist SARAH ELIZABETH CORNEJO Sarah Elizabeth is from Darling, South Carolina, between Backswamp and Alligator Branch (we can’t make this stuff up). She is currently a sophmore English and Studio Art double major, preparing for a future as a writer, illustrator or dog-rescuer.

Grounds For Divorce

y father was stealing pieces of my mother and hiding them. He stole her humor, her wit, the majority of her laughter, her spunk. Even her bitchiness. He stole it all while she was sleeping, or too tired to keep watch, or at the end of long days or loud fights. He took those pieces one by one when she wasn’t looking so when she reached for one and couldn’t find it, she just thought she’d misplaced it. I’m sure she was worried, especially after Wit went missing, or when she heard a subtle joke and tried to laugh but instead choked on an empty space. I’m sure she was concerned about all these pieces going missing, but there was work, and us, and him, and food that he wanted on the table at six, hot, and him wanting her, and her too tired to worry about wanting him back. “She was so tired; tired hung on her like millions of tiny magnets, particles of added weight that pulled down on the bags under her eyes, her eyelashes, her hair, the corners of her mouth, her shoulders, her breasts… She could barely stand up for all the tired. “I read somewhere that if you starve yourself, your metabolism slows down so your body doesn’t use up so many calories and can conserve energy. So maybe that’s why she let it go and didn’t fight for her missing pieces – she had so many things to get right every day, that she may have though it was a blessing that parts of her were being stolen because she might not have lasted this long if she had had to keep so many pieces of herself going. “She would bring us home from school and listen, make dinner alone, answer him at the table, and read stories to us at night while he waited in their bedroom, rolling stolen pieces of her around in his palms, and she would fall asleep with us and keep him waiting. “When that happened, he would come in and watch the four of us, maybe even steal another piece of her for revenge. Maybe something small like one of her interests, or maybe something bigger like one of her friends. At some point though, I think he stole her reasons for loving him, and then she forgot altogether. “That’s when he started wanting her more, everyday, and saying ‘yes’ was easier than defending ‘no’, so she said ‘yes’ and then stayed inside her own skin, thinking but not feeling. Lovemaking became sex, and sex became the peace agreement she made for our house with the stranger that is my father.

LIBERTAS, Vol. 20, No. 2

“That’s when he started yelling. He yelled, and yelled, and yelled, and in the breaths he took between his loud words, that millisecond of silence would plead her to love him, to love him so much, more than us, more than herself, more than the pieces she was made of, but he didn’t realize he had stolen her reasons for loving him, and instead the yelling just made her deaf to him. When she couldn’t hear him she stopped being able to place him in our home. She stopped responding to him, she stopped being able to say yes to a question she couldn’t hear, and eventually she just stopped seeing him. “He turned angry then, and so sad, but mostly angry, and frustrated. He’d stolen pieces of her so that she would be more his than anyone else’s, but without all of her own parts, she started looking for herself, and she found what she was looking for in us: shadows of all her missing pieces. That made her turn on him, I guess. Then he turned red, and purple, and red, and blue, and lonely, and small, but she couldn’t see him, and she was so tired, and there was dinner, and us, and a husband somewhere she was on the lookout for; one she couldn’t see or hear. “But his anger started to boil and he started to give off heat, which was gradual at first, the three of us would warm our hands over his napping furnace of a form, but he kept boiling and his anger became bigger than he was. Our house became a sauna in winter. We wore our bathing suits, and ate popsicles, and watched the leaves fall outside of our home. “His anger just got bigger and bigger and boiled and boiled and he started to expand and he started to float. He face became a stretched reddened version of the man that was our father. He tried to touch his feet down to earth but he finally just hung in the air or stuck to our ceiling trying to pull himself from room to room, his fingers scorching our walls and leaving blackened traces of his furious helplessness. He would scream to my mother from above her head spitting boiling water that turned to steam around her ears, but she never looked up. It was just so hot in the house. His anger had fogged over the windows and created sweat stains on the painted walls, so we tied ropes around his wrists and his ankles and pulled him through the air into the backyard. We tied the ropes to tree limbs all over the yard and left him out there giving off steam from his boiling anger.

A Story “Everyday we would bring out food to him, easy things to hold in your hand like bagels and string cheese and we would pull him down by the ropes just low enough to the ground to take the food from us and then we would let him go again and he would float back up to the end of his ropes eating in the air and looking at our house, still faintly steaming from his existence there. He was still so angry and red and purple and blue and sad, but he ate and we sat beneath him, also staring at our house… anything but at each other. “One day we went out at dinner time, it was always just the three of us since Mom still couldn’t see him, and we brought him his dinner, a peanut butter sandwich, and pulled him down to get it. He hung close to the ground before us, humiliated, a spectacle, and before we let him drift back up, he looked at me and said “Give this to your mother,” and gave me a small shard, pointy and jagged in my hand – a small piece of her. “Each night he would quietly hand one of us a piece of her to give back – big pieces, small pieces, round ones, one that had all pointy sides, and every night while she was reading us a story we would silently put it back for her, and each night we would go back out to see him, he’d have dropped an inch or so lower to earth. “Mom started to scare us a little after that; we would make a rude comment and she would snap at us, or we would ask her a question and she would give us an answer we believed and then laugh at us all for being so gullible. She started baking cookies with us that we ate sitting on the kitchen floor with our hands, and we even had spaghetti one night at nine-thirty, all of us telling stories at once and talking with our mother who laughed and talked back. “Until the morning we woke up and couldn’t find her. She wasn’t in her room, or making breakfast or reading the New York Times. Instead we saw her through the unfogged windows of our back door, sitting on the ground with her back to us, talking to a man who was sitting in front of her, with coils and coils of rope covering the ground around him, loosely fastening him to tree trunks and tree limbs all over our backyard. He had sagging skin falling over his eyes, and below his jaw and hanging off his arms, like he had shrunk too quickly for his skin to shrink with him, and he was crying boiling hot tears that gave off steam in the cold outside.

Sarah Elizabeth Cornejo

Eleanor Yarboro

When I was eleven I had a best friend and she had a big yellow trampoline and that was why she was my best friend. Her mom was a gynecologist but she was just a little too brisk (in private she was all business, you know?) and so they moved further south where a firm hand was welcomed and I never saw my friend or her yellow trampoline again.

Sitting in a McDonald’sGas Station Combo Let me ask you a terrifying question. How many abducted children have you walked by in a dirty, old convenience store? Scott Walker Cunningham

LIBERTAS, V o l . 2 0 , N o . 2

the other genesis: the myth of the private

wonder, sometimes, what the world was like before private parts. Or private property, for that matter. Marx aside, I think about the body, and what it means to let ourselves be seen with confidence. I wonder what Eve’s bare skin bore as a testament to her Creator’s magnificence. I wonder what, in the days before hunger, woman thought about her ribs, and whether she ever considered her stomach better if it were flatter or if she were skinnier. I wonder what the serpent told her that made her feel ashamed to let her breasts be tasted by the earth in the purest flavor of naked. I wonder if her dark-skinned palette could ever be accurately presented by modern painters. I wonder if woman will ever consider herself beautiful again without any tainting or modification. I wonder if the snake’s sharp and biting words will leave the ego in a heap of hollow clothing forever, or whether the rattling of fear in woman’s ear will eventually be dispelled, like hellfire quenched by springtime rain. I wonder if truth will reign to take away the shame and self-loathing perpetuated by Western advertising. I wonder what she does with the private thoughts that creep in the ribcage and settle to make her feel that she is being eaten alive. I wonder what Marx would say about woman’s body being sold as a commodity and I wonder if Eve will regain the consciousness to strip away the false rhetoric and let her skin glisten in the garden. I wonder when God will descend to make the Kingdom: the republic of skin, where all women are created beautiful, a reality in this concrete jungle of a world once again.

elizabeth welliver

LIBERTAS, Vol. 20, No. 2

the topos of un-naming

n Arabic, I am the mother of the Prophet. I am honest, trustworthy, and faithful. In Krio, I am a legacy. At home, I am Ma because my name carries such deference, adults won’t utter it. In English, I am mispronounced, thick syllables churning on the tongue. Out there, I reconfigured, renamed, and stripped. In second grade I was ‘menata. In fifth grade I was ‘minada. In seventh grade I was do you have a nickname? Some days I am Aminita, Ameeata, ‘ta, and when they want something from me, “A.” “Sarah,” “Jennifer,” “John,” “Rachel,” “Calvin,” “Ahh-mee-na-da?” Ohhh, how I used to shrink, cower in my seat when they called my name. You push Hooked on Phonics but you can’t pronounce a phonetic name. Always adding extra syllables and letters, elongating my embarrassment. My name, heavy on their tongues; I knew how Esperanza felt; Mango Street didn’t do her justice. I used to be ashamed. Shrinking, lower and lower into the floor hoping that nobody would notice me. Shame on me for being ashamed; Shame on me for not standing up straight; Shame on me for not embodying a name fit for a Queen. Amen for Aminata, an exaltation of truth. My destiny was written and given to me in the day I was named. Divinely decreed, I was always who I am before I knew who I was. My parents knew too. That’s why mommy didn’t write my names down when I was born, not even the nurse knew. You have to wait for the ceremony, the pulnado. For forty days, we wait. Wait until you are presented, introduced to the world with an identity that will carry you forever. Your character, etched into your name, when said aloud becomes you. The name gives you an identity. This is for the Khadijas, Isatas, Aminatas, Fatmatas, Mwas, Comforts, and Bintas who knew their purpose before birth. Each syllable of her name, simultaneously, unfolding her future and exposing her shame. Each syllable of her name, simultaneously, unfolding her identity and years of family history. I am she and they are me. This is us.

aminata dumbuya

Disappearing Act, in Three Frames

I. For Abby Beneath a helmet of blue sky, I pumped my pedals with ferocity to keep up with my sister sailing ahead. I have been told that my sister and I look nothing alike. Silver tassels streamed sideways: I think it’s her hair. my flamingo pink bicycle Red not candy apple red or fire engine red or Little Mermaid out of a bottle red. carrying me away like a chariot No, her hair is red like fiery embers glowing in the center of a burning log of wood. around the cul-de-sac (my tropical island, no trespassing please). Her hair is red like the final leaves clinging to the trees in our backyard during autumn. Bordered by training wheels, My hair is brown, like dirt. I rode across the sunshine and palm trees Her hair is alive. I’d painted in every color of chalk I could find Her hair sheds sparks of sunlight as she walks. while she left me behind. My sister grew smaller, smaller as she flew over the river of asphalt; I watched her disappear before turning back for home. II. Sequins, stripes, sweaters piled higher every month, spilling from my closet and cluttering the floor. Panty hose and miniskirts stuffed in my drawers, hidden so my mom wouldn’t see them unless she looked. Standing on my dresser in four-inch heels, I could barely peek through the air vent into my sister’s room. She sat in the dark—greys and blacks of dirty laundry scattered across the floor, next to a pair of converse encircled with duct tape once the sole had worn though. Slivers of moonlight cut across her arms and the back of her neck as she stabbed extra notches on the inside of her belt. I knelt beside her, the wall dividing us, and tried to ignore the Snow White nightgown laid out on my bed.

My hair is brown, like dirt.

No, my sister and I look nothing alike. She angers slowly while I have a temper hotter than her hair. She forgives (eventually) while I hold on Too tightly to the ripcord of life. She strives towards her goals but never lets go of her values. She gives the best hugs in the world. She listens and her advice is, admittedly, tough love, but what needs to be heard. She keeps secrets like baby teeth Hidden away. She laughs at some of my jokes even though all of them are cheesy. She tells me that my jokes are cheesy. She listens to every poem I read to her and hangs on the words Like wet sheets drying on a clothesline in the afternoon sunlight. She loves me. She loves me. She loves me. Some days, she doesn’t like me very much. But she always loves me. Yes, my sister and I look nothing alike. But every morning when I look in the mirror I pray that I look a little more like her. And I wait for the day that I find the first strand of liquid fire against the backdrop of dirt on my scalp.

Katie Gomulkiewicz

III. Suffocation: every molecule of oxygen captured within tanks and tubes, blown through patients’ noses; none left for the visitors noon to eight, four on Sundays. We drove from stained-glass windows to white-scrubbed walls. Heart attack, cancer, smoker’s lung, eating disorder—wing by wing until we reached her designated chamber. Between white sheets and a white paper gown, sister slept with her head bowed down in a doze, drool sneaking from her mouth. We knew we shouldn’t wake her so we stood at the foot of her temporary bed, looking up at Happy Feet on the television above our heads.

Samantha Gowing

LIBERTAS, V o l . 2 0 , N o . 2

my bed is damp, your breathing heavy; Like a garden hose curled tightly into a mess in the corner, in a post-coital state— you unwind me and turn me on. your body warm, my cheeks flushed— They say love is the ultimate form of trust but really, I seek the best way to maintain this, I think those evenings when all I’ve got is the heat to sustain you. “come with me, in here,” I posit softly of your breath to protect me from the cold, and slip out from under the lavender sheet, into the When your fingertips probe the shoreline of my neck bathroom. looking for a place to take root you follow, breath still strained but hands reaching and I say, here. out I’d be more inclined to call that trust. to me, feet obeying desire. Because like a garden hose, the last time I went to work I was twisted the wrong way, and he didn’t have the decency to coil me back up. the hair in our shower has gathered at the drain. So I did the best I could, but Lord knows I’m left hanging fallen from my head, with kinks in my system. your head, Expecting to be tugged tighter & tighter as I give you head, until those kinks are cemented stray locks venture downward and that trust won’t flow, only you, yet we do not notice the insignificant weight You take the time to trace every last secret to its source. shed from our bodies. To follow the line down till you can discern just what’s got me tangled. I pull you closer to me and scratch Look, I know my faucet’s leaky faint, vertical lines upon your back. and I know sometimes the pressure to conform is too high, and you are turned to me but eyes closed; and I’ll lay there writhing, begging you to turn that spigot back to the right I crouch in the shallow pool of cool water, but those are the times that you whisper in my ear with the soft reminder low water temperature because sex makes you that I’m made of rubber. sweat— And hell if that last gardener really needed an upgrade in irrigation then fine a cleansing but moist release because my dandelions are the brightest you’ll see all year. that I don’t mind sticking to my own body. do not leave this puddle of our affections. my hair intertwined into yours, on the shower floor and again as you bring my body up towards you and embrace me. fuse our limbs and cores together, so that I can interpose the bonds of our bodies our minds our feelings until we cannot distinguish one from another.

Kinks Genevieve Rowe

The Hair in Our Shower Madeline Parker

LIBERTAS, Vol. 20, No. 2

Poems About Wood 4 Ethan Whitener

Antenna

Graham Marema

It happened when you were in your car Listening to the radio Driving to the city alone Pressed in by the dark of 11:30 PM Blue glowing from your dashboardâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s radio Like a reflection of water Seen from the bottom of a pool The station you were listening to went out Smothered by the chalk on blackboard sound of static Pushing you down, suddenly White noise in the night Ghost voices from an interfering station Heard across a chasm

Platform divers and tanned breakneck Tilt-a-whirl thrills, disguised hazel eyes And you began to wonder whose signal peer into cardboard diorama models Fought to exist of Mafioso Family Structure in King Lear, In your blue-lit car at 11:31 PM or, Was Art Garfunkel a Sicilian? On your way to the city alone A poplar crate of beers and deep-fried mussels, jazz singers in tasseled twirls You wondered whether it was a broadcast and tanned breakneck tilt-a-whirl muscles from chasing a tattooed hazel disguise in platform heels. A radio tower not far from you Packs of rats scrounging meals off lonely cardboard Atop a wind-warped peak advertisements antique from the Rat Pack, Dean Martin Bent against weather and age crooning in between smooth operetta jazz music With a single caretaker who continued to and dancing tasseled singers leering past send out the gold crucifix of a Sicilian man with curly Art The ghost voices Garfunkel hair and a poplar cane three-stepping Hoping someone would listen next to any tattooed singer who will croon his direction. And you did listen Much before the neckless bocce mafioso begins the DiTomassos trade the family pharmacy Until your car was once more out of range for a necklace to the chagrin ofâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;well, everyone. Steam-breathed teenagers, dreamcatchers and side hustles looking for love at the Italian-American festival. LIBERTAS, V o l . 2 0 , N o . 2

The Battle of Stalingrad

mourning was all Mack had needed at the site of Sasha’s new doghouse. He certainly did not need a lecture. The unchallenged sun promised a day of pleasant skiing, but the temperature surely taring at the frozen terrier, tangled and trapped within wouldn’t break five degrees until midafternoon. Mack was cold. the tree well, Susan knew that Joseph would never “Mack! Come back! Do not just leave me standing in the snow have let this happen. Joseph, practical and rational with a dead dog.” Watching Mack kick up the powder as he strolled would have had the foresight necessary to understand that an eight back to the patio, Susan began aiming her iPhone at his head. If one pound dog would not survive if its owner tossed it into a Sun Valof the rhinestones caught him with just enough force, it might even ley blizzard in early January. Joseph would not have lost his patience draw blood. Maybe even leave a bruise. The dog murderer might if the lonely dog’s barking had kept him awake. Joseph would have even stomp back to the tree and scream in her face, or have enough handled the situation like a man. But naturally, Mack was not Joseph anger to string three or four sentences together. It would probably and even if he was inferior to Susan’s lover in every way, he was still be their longest conversation of the day, providing she didn’t miss her husband of twenty-two years. and end up breaking the bedazzled mobile on the brick of the walls. “Explain to me again what on earth you were thinking when She didn’t have the nerve. you let our dog, our children’s beloved dog freeze to death, Mack. Instead she sent a text message to Joseph, three accusatory Please.” question marks. He hadn’t responded to any of her frantic, sym“It was too loud, Susan.” Of course. A tactless and cold reply pathy-seeking messages the previous night, and her patience was from a tactless and cold fool was all Susan should have expected to fading with him too. She promptly deleted their conversation on her hear. phone. As a practiced adulteress, she prided herself on her ability “The dog was loud, so you condemned it to death in a blizto cover her tracks. She knew Joseph was doing the same lest his zard? Excellent! Please tell that to the girls when they fly in tonight. bloated wife decide to investigate. “MACK! Come back here, fix this Tell them just that! I want to be there when you do! Tell them you goddamned mess and apologize for slaughtering Sasha.” punished our dog by locking it outside and watched it freeze to Mack had already reached the side door to the kitchen and death in the loose snow around the trunk of a tree. Just that!” opened the door to forty-five degrees. He sighed, but Mack did not Neither Susan nor Mack had brought coats with them. Hav- bother closing the door or even removing his hand from the dooring noticed the hesitant paw prints from the porch to the tree well in knob as he turned to face Susan. His wife, her hands on her hips the center of their yard, they had both realized poor Sasha’s fate the and her lips slightly chapped, assumed herself to be an indomitable moment they looked out their kitchen window. Susan had screamed force, but was, in fact, entirely conquerable beneath the exterior before racing to the garden in thin cashmere and Mack had sipushiness and violent words. She always had been. lently followed. A brief moment of contemplation and half-hearted “Sleeping on the office couch night after night is uncomfort-

LIBERTAS, Vol. 20, No. 2

able, Susan. Sleeping on the office couch with an insufferable rat barking at your heels is lethal.” “I’m sorry that an eight pound dog was too much for a grown man to handle! I do apologize! I would have hoped that an adult could have moved our pet to a different room, could have understood that there are rational solutions to these –” “Susan.” “No, listen! My Sasha froze to death because your sleep was disturbed and you didn’t think to move her to another room. Do you not think, Mack? Ever? Do you not think about the fact that actions have consequences? Do you stop and think about the way that your actions will affect those around you? Does the future even exist in your head? I truly wonder how I have spent twenty-two years with someone who did not understand the repercussions of tossing a living thing into a blizzard, someone who imagined that he could forsake a member of our family and then just imagine that everything would be fine in the morning! You can’t do that, Mack! You just can’t. When you lock something out of the houses to die in the cold, it will proceed to die in the cold because actions have consequences!” Never one to hold herself back or use a period where an exclamation mark would do just as well, Susan felt especially energized broadcasting in the yard of her mountain palace. Perhaps she wasn’t an academic like Mack, but by god she could argue. Still panting slightly after her passionate delivery, she was made uncomfortably aware that her monologue had gone completely uninterrupted and that, in fact, Mack’s countenance seemed only to politely enquire if she had finished. “Do you know what else one cannot lock outside in the cold and then be expected to live to see morning?” Mack asked, seemingly unhindered and unmoved by his wife’s speech.

“Shall we skip to the pet store and buy some subjects? We can experiment on all of them and see which ones die of hypothermia and which ones throw themselves before moving traffic out of desperation! Let’s find out!” “Husbands, Susan. You cannot discard husbands or leave them out in the cold without assuming that something is going to die. You cannot replace them with a new pet and think that no one will notice your trip to the pet store. Actions do have consequences, Susan. And when you don’t think about those consequences, relationships freeze to death in the snow. Your phone is ringing.” Her ringtone was Britney Spears. It made her feel youthful, and, indeed, Britney was cooing in Susan’s left hand as the iPhone vibrated. Susan’s new pet was calling. She intentionally did not keep Joseph’s number in her contacts list, but she knew his number instantly. She listened to the phone ring. Britney made it through the chorus, Joseph went to voicemail, and Mack went inside. Susan turned back toward little Sasha’s ignominious resting place. Perhaps she had lost the argument and had even lost Sasha, whom Susan had raised and loved even if Mack and the children never appreciated her. Death by hypothermia must be among the least pleasant ways to go, she thought. The feeling of the heart beat and respiratory rates sinking toward a flat-line as major organs fail and thinking becomes sluggish. Her dog was just a fluffy icicle now, just a canvas of ice crystals unresponsive to stimuli. But the siege was not over. Susan believed in the power of her own will and the value of standing fast. She followed Mack’s tracks toward the kitchen door. It was time to start making breakfast. She felt like scrambled eggs.

Tom James

LIBERTAS, V o l . 2 0 , N o . 2

Warzone Jackson Mauzé

hen the drill sergeant swept into the bunkhouse, Helen was already awake. She leapt out of her cot like the rest of cadets, standing at attention. The sergeant ran a quick inspection as he rattled off orders. She passed and was grateful that he didn’t speak directly to her. She wasn’t listening. Her hands and feet were clammy, her eyes glazed. The drill sergeant stopped talking. “Sir, yes sir!” barked the cadets. Helen hadn’t said anything, but the sergeant hadn’t noticed. It didn’t seem important. Across from her Tommy raised a taunting eyebrow. She averted her eyes. Even the slightest smirk on his dimpled face made her nauseous. He was first. The drill sergeant swept out, leaving the cadets to prepare their equipment. They swirled busily around her but she stayed rooted to her spot. A fiery urge pulsed through her inert body. Do it now, it ordered her. From her pocket she pulled a folded photograph, a picture of two smiling little girls. They both had mousy brown hair, gaps in their front teeth, and the same glowing blue eyes that shone from her face. They were her last slice of sanity. The pulsing urge grew stronger. Do it now. “Helen,” whispered a voice in her ear. Her eyes went wide. She knew who it was. Tommy leaned over to look at the photograph. Her hands began to shake. “You seem a little tired, cadet.” He grazed a hand down her spine. “Maybe tonight we’ll take it a bit easier? You didn’t seem like the romantic type, but maybe it’ll do you some good.” Nobody else seemed to notice. They wouldn’t see. “Do it now,” growled the voice. This time she wouldn’t disappoint. “I’m sorry,” she said, gripping the photograph tighter, her eyes tearing. When she spun and planted the mess fork in his jugular, he didn’t look scared or hurt, just confused. So she stabbed him again, this time in the cheek. He screamed and lurched away, spurts of red mist billowing into the air. She stopped long enough to tuck the photograph back into her pant pocket before descending on him, teeth bared.

LIBERTAS, Vol. 20, No. 2

still remember the first girl I ever liked, as in liked-liked. Her name was Courtney, I was twelve, she was eleven, and when someone asked me if I liked her, I happily said, “Yes!” She avoided me for at least a week.

ranged from the shy: “To Jenny: you’re so kindhearted and help everyone. I think you’re really sweet,” to the awkward: “Scott, you’re the hottest guy in IT. You can change my toner anytime” to the bold: “Tom’s got the cutest ass on campus. Do me”. Perhaps Tom thought Jenny was sweet, or Jenny really wanted Scott to “change her toner,” With the second girl, I was thirteen, and thus another year older, an- but no one would ever know for sure. They’d secretly admitted their other year wiser. When someone asked me if I liked her, I denied it. love to anyone in the Facebook group, and that was romance. She avoided me for at least a week. Interestingly, both likealittle and Davidson Admirers are gone, but Nine years later, I understand that I was young and inexperienced in nothing’s taken their place. I admit, I kind of hoped students would the ways of romance. More importantly, I lacked the proper tools to leave their scrawled crush confessions on bulletin boards around the express my affection. What I needed was the Internet. school, or get down on one knee at Summit and profess their love: “Sarah, I like you more than I like 50 cent PBR, and you know that’s I’ve just started using “Whisper.” The iPhone app feels like a blend of a lot.” Instagram and PostSecret, doused in an (un)healthy amount of teen angst and then wrapped in one of those purple “girlz-secret” elec- Instead of taking our online secrets publicly offline, we could just tronically-locked diaries. Take a photo, apply a filter, and then caption drop the unrequited nonsense and take our feelings to Tinder, Grindr, it with your secret. Well, your secret that you feel comfortable posting or Bang With Friends. Bang with Friends is the one that intrigues to thousands of people under an untraceable screen name. me the most. You check off Facebook friends you’d hook up with. If they check you off too, both sides find out, and supposedly that Whisper seems to be unabashedly self-contradictory. Imagine some- dispels any awkwardness that prevented you two from expressing one who, rather than keeping an angsty middle school diary, typed your love, or at least, lust. If not, your attraction remains private. It their feelings on colorful yet anonymous posters and left them wher- certainly eliminates the blushing teenaged poetry of Whisper or any ever they went. Now imagine ten thousand of those people. Imagine other option. “Your eyes call to me like beautiful songbirds,” becomes there’s an app for that. That’s Whisper. “Yes”, “I would”, or, least poetically of all, “You’ll do.”.

But I know that she won’t find me, and if she does, how the hell will she know my screen name? I’m not going to make it to the Popular page, or even the enigmatic Featured page. Those are more like a best-of of relatively mundane tweets: “My wife and I were both high at our wedding.” “My accent changes depending on who I’m speaking to.” “ I like making ugly faces at babies in the store when their parents aren’t watching.” These people have good stories that they actually should tell at parties. What should I use to express my love as eloquently as possible, barring the effectiveness of Whisper? Thankfully, we have websites for that. My freshman year, there was “likealittle.com” where you could describe your romantic longings like this: “Hair: Brown. Eyes: Blue. Spotted: Union. You wore a purple shirt and were talking to your friends about Napoleon. I want you to know you’re the emperor of my heart.” They’d never know it was you –- according to the site, it was “Blueberry” (or whoever) who saw this mauve-clad Francophile –- but maybe, just maybe, they’d see your post and know that there was someone out there waiting for their romantic conquest. Then we had Davidson Admirers. Same idea, but as some kind of Facebook/Tumblr hybrid. These confessions – still anonymous –

My Love For You is Like a Blog. James Mersol

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LIBERTAS, V o l . 2 0 , N o . 2

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More accurately, that’s you, electronically shouting to anyone who Not that I don’t admire Bang with Friends, or any of the other apps wants to hear it. I’ve mentioned. What will you shout? Hell, I’m a busy college student – I don’t have time to compare someone’s smile to a A sepia-tone picture of someone’s hand proclaims, “I just want a nice radiant sunbeam or their hair to some applicable cliché. Why risk boy who will hold me tight” passes by a close-up of someone’s bicep getting my heartthat asks, “Where are all the nice girls who just want you to hold broken when I’m already risking my GPA by taking Organic Chemthem tight?”, both completely unaware of each other. istry? A black and white picture of some trees loudly proclaims “Im better These apps make it so much faster and less scary to find someone. of without u”. The worst that could happen is that nobody ever responds to me. If A selfie jumps into the middle and says, “any cute ladies want to chat? that happens, I can always find a stock photo of some fruit and add 22 M”. my disappointment as a caption, for the Internet to see my public, Selfie is drowned out by a blue sky asking, “Who loves American private sorrow. Idol?”. Close-up of someone’s left eyebrow responds, “nobody knos my pain :(“. The same selfie pops up again: “Looking for nerdy girls 2 chat 19 M”. I jump in as a vintage-filtered photo of a ferris wheel: “I saw you for the first time in 3 years and knew my love for you would never be gone.” I think this is very poetic. Maybe enough people will feel my pain that I’ll make it to the Popular page. Maybe someone will understand me. Maybe she’ll respond with a picture of a potted plant that says “me 2 :)”.

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LIBERTAS, Vol. 20, No. 2

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t1 4a

Michae l De S im o n e

picks

music

michael’s

#relevant Freq (feat. Jojo)

ou know that scene in the opening in Kingdom Hearts when Sora falls through the ocean and then he lands on the sand. Gravity as a quadratic curve type deal. Heavy light heavy. Reverse that and you have Freq, falling up only to have gravity lock you halfway between stars and dark. The beat throbs in the tenuous gravity, falling floating falling. Breath in. Eyes open to vomit inducing stop-starts of star smudged white light moving faster and slower than Gravity flips. But keep them open enough, move with the flow of the lunar tide, and the one risk Pharrell made on his indelibly safe album makes sense. “You gotta go inward.”

Pharrell

You may also enjoy: The first minute of Hero by Frank Ocean x Diplo x The Clash, Second Chance by Onra, Tell Me feat D’Angelo by Slum Village

o onto any online music label and pick a song, any song. No matter if you’re on Soulection or Majestic or any other site that specializes in sad soft core porn superimposed over the concept of youtbe images, you’ll hear a track that is no different that Don’t Tell Me. Bubbling and sleepy synth lines featuring a female vocalist that begs that you find her lack of range cute instead of inexperienced (and really, if it wasn’t Steven Spielberg’s daughter singing on this track, would this vocal even matter). While Don’t Tell Me fits in with this simple group of tracks well, it excels in a middle section full of desperate energy. Taking the sadness of Spielberg’s single vocal line directly in mind, Jaar moves heartbreak into desperation, dancing the fear and hurt away instead of letting it grow. Fear turns into hope and Spielberg melts away with reason to replay the track all over again.

Don’t Tell Me Just Friends

(Nicolas Jaar x Sasha Spielberg)

You may also enjoy: Changes feat. Heart Streets by LOL Boys, A Long Walk for Parted Lovers by Yumi Zouma

here is an obvious reason people don’t rap like they did in the 70s. Speaking with periods at the end of every line isn’t the best way to sell talent. But on 100s retro futurism ep IVRY, this delivery works wonders. The four by four dumb bass, the reverb full tail ends of each of 100s lines, the super relevant disco references, and the chorus full of pinks and purples and vocoded singing that sounds much more at home on some shit Blood Orange and Daft Punk collaboration and not a release that features songs such as “Can a Nigga Hit It” and “Ten Freaky Hoes” all make this track an outright blissful experience. On an ep that grapples between traditional machismo and total enigma, Different Type of Love sits right in the center, ready to fall apart at any moment, and all the better for it.

Different Type of Love (feat. Cherub) 100s

You may also enjoy: Rap from your local block party, If Dubbing U Is Wrong I Don’t Want To Be Wrong by Lockah

inally, he gave in. How To Dress Well’s Tom Krell made a straight pop record in the most lovingly obvious and modestly obnoxious way possible. Acoustic guitar strums, delicate keyboard presses, funky bass in the wonderful/disgusting way a bass is referred to as funky, muted hand claps, quick electric guitar solos, choir cheers cover the track like GarageBand settings, but come together in such a starry eyed way that I’m falling in love on a bright, summer day every single listen. I know global warming sucks but it is doing wonders with letting Canadian artists bring in some spring air.

Repeat Pleasure

How to Dress Well

You may also enjoy: Fill Me in by Craig David, Track 7 by Jai Paul, Lettin’ Go! by Janelle Monae

Other relevant tunes: Past Lives by Real Estate, Affairs by P. Morris, all of the St. Vincent album, Bedtime Story by Goldlink, Can’t Leave the Night by BADBADNOTGOOD, Starlight by Pure X, Movie by Kevin Gates.

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LIBERTAS last word