This week marks William Shakespeare’s 460th birthday! To celebrate, Gretje Kooistra-Collar and Ella Hart, student members of the The Society of the Red Masquerade Chapter at Churchill High School in Livonia, MI, have imagined a contemporary Shakespeare visiting a Meijer in Elk Rapids, MI.
The Meijer burns with thought; my eyes are beacons of impenetrable judgment, and yet the woman wears of orange, displeasing the stars and in contrast with her sand-dollar skin, wholly fruit-esque and cruel pieces amongst her figure. The hat upon her head tilts, crumbling as if a decrepit tower, and leads her strings of hair astray into a world of unruly hideousness.
O’ black building, thy commonwealth all carry a misplaced swagger, for they disrespect thy name, weakening you to the soul of an ever-consuming nation, often misremembering the times when thou servest thy peace with careful hand, providing carefully strewn necessities for the less-fortunate folk. Do these citizens undervalue thy majesty with their unruly fashions?
The hideous lady picks up a green specimen and examines it; why must thy be so critical of the things those who are not us, and we cannot control? As she puts it back, I ponder upon this idea: why we are so judgemental, is this is how we treat the things that keep us alive, how does one treat one’s own kinsman, strangers, or friends?
I am lost in thought when there is a light tap on my shoulder, I spin to find the horridly distasteful woman to be at my back. She ponders upon why I am staring at her and I tell her my thoughts about humanity and the selfishness of it all. Her eyes burn bright with hatred, though I can not tell why. When I finish speaking my mind, she takes a verbal jab at me. It is as if my soul has been pierced by her articulation, an arrow biting through my own tender mind. I draw back, my words, now incomprehensible.
Swiftly relenting to her attack, I decide to try my luck amongst the spirits. The aisle, bereft of disturbance, allows me time to deliberate on my evening’s selection. The money with which I commonly reserve for the payments on my land and home have recently run quite bare, and so, with a deductive hand, I grasp a lower-valued Italian white from the shelf. I plan on inviting an esteemed, though quite inquisitive, maybe to a destructive fault, fellow poet for dinner this Saturday.
However, as I pick up my lackluster bottle, I overhear a subtle, though intensely intriguing conversation. A man speaks to a friend about the situation that has evolved within his temporary home. The man’s brother is a leader of a handful of returning soldiers, one of whom wishes to marry the daughter belonging to himself. This man hides behind his shelves of wine, is occupying the home of by the graces of his singular, male kin. Though the major portions of the conversation are relatively Greek to me, I intended to catalog these facts, possibly as useful pieces of information for a future work, though who is to say, truly.
The forgone conclusion of my escapade is my down-turned exit. I am a casually sanctimonious fellow, but with my earlier misstep, my reputation within the establishment had seen better days. As I pass through the threshold of the shop, the hideously dressed woman from earlier gives me an obscene sort of look, although it is more than simply obscene, as obscene is not nearly a visceral enough term to describe it. I must create another word in some later work to better explain this terrible glare.
Gretje Kooistra-Collar and Ella Hart are students at Churchill High School in Livonia, Michigan and E-Board members in the NEHS chapter. Gretje is a junior and is the Secretary for Churchill’s NEHS chapter, The Society of the Red Masquerade. She is an avid reader and writer and hopes to one day make a career of writing in some form; she is supported in this endeavor by her Chapter Advisor, David Hebestreit, who says that she is one of the most gifted writers he has ever had in creative writing. Ella Hart is a senior and President of the NEHS chapter at Churchill. She has been a member of the chapter for three years and has helped shape the club policy and practice. Ella hopes to study Classics in college and has been a dynamic and caring member of the chapter, helping it grow and become a visible aspect of the school community.
