THE ARCHIVE

Duke University's oldest undergraduate literary magazine, est. 1887

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THE ARCHIVE 2024 EDITION

Poetry: 1. Entreat for Liberation by Navya Adhikarla 2. David Bowie Died in Spain by Natalia Farris 3. Cycles by Judy Chen 4. laundry by Sayjudenu Tukan 5. Ethiopia by Naomi Samuel 6. Untitled by Ava Ondik 7. Hour Hand by Sancia Milton 8. Meaza Leaves Ethiopia by Naomi Samuel 9. (Horses) Still on the Fields by Patricia Okwueze 10. To Be Alone by Patricia Okwueze 11. To Watch a Flower Die by Patricia Okwueze 12. Need Title by Patricia Okwueze 13. "Ode to Apostrophes" by Aidan Klein 14. The Gospel According to Pelops by Lila Taylor 15. nonbinary by Jocelyn Chin 16. Crinkleberries by Natalia Harnisch 17. an early conversation with my loving mother by Kit Shauf 18. Eleven Eyes by Natalia Harnisch

Prose: 1. Red Orison by Ruby Wang 2. Shuiyang Forest by Jocelyn Chin 3. Quis ut Deus by Akourkor Allotey

Submissions:

email original and unpublished work of any medium (writing, art, photography, and more) to the archive. submissions will be considered for both our online edition and spring 2025 physical edition. multiple submissions welcome and encouraged.

contact us or submit pieces at [email protected].

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Entreat for Liberation

by: Navya Adhikarla

An exhaustive loop goes round and round. Up into the heaven and into the ground. An exhaustive loop goes up and down; into the anger and beneath the frown. An unwelcome exhaustion; there is no celebration of the spring sun, in the face of many reassurance sung. Details seen, not many but I. Differences keen. oh, so many went by! An exhaustive loop, overwhelmingly rejected. Out the chambers, quickened and back. An exhaustive loop, a conferrer of languor. In a veil, the brass tack. An unwelcome exhaustion; a spare avocation, in the face of imminent limitation. An exhaustive loop goes round and round. Up into the divine and into the profound. Down the main and the earth bound.

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David Bowie Died in Spain

by: Natalie Farris

Poster David Bowie looked at me with his wet paper eyes

(wet only because it was raining)

Skin glitter pink and tight red sticker lips

Looked at me hungrily because

He wanted me to buy tickets

BUY TICKETS

it probably said

(that part was covered up by the other poster)

No

COMPRA BILLETES

(We’re in Madrid)

And although I didn’t quite

Then

I will laugh at him next time he looks at me like that

Because at last, por fin,

David Bowie wants something from me

And I don’t want a thing from David Bowie

Here in Spain he is covered up, slicked, thwacked, tacked right over

And I bet you un millón de euros he never stood on that corner

Like I did 

Las cosas más profundas son las más estúpidas

My professor said

And I hope David Bowie disagrees

So I can laugh again

I don’t know David Bowie

Except I think there was a movie

(You know because you know everything)

It’s this radical problem of mine

I’m lousy at knowing people I’ve never met

But then I’m lousy at knowing people I know

I will apologize to my mother

In the morrow

And my lover

I pass the empty church and now it’s a promise

(I am rightfully chastised, I bow my head)

It’s a Catholic country and the sacred mourning rain touches me too

And then the tiny old invert-faced beret man, bristle-chin out for the rain

And the silky-haired offspring of Spaniards, who laugh twiddle-legged in the wet perfumed Smoke,  

The brick-blackener, the grit in the pigeons’ eyes

That we all call “aire” 

Here in Madrid 

And then most importantly

The woman on the other side

Waiting on the red light 

Her pixie cut absorbing the rain upside-down

Mousy brown, mousy frown

Oh she is just like me

She must see from my own plainness and gayness 

We’re alone together in this city 

Her glance wavers around Bowie 

The first betrayal 

At the green bleeping we march towards each other

La Gran Reunión

Our hunched and colorful aides a little behind

(A little old woman each) 

But Her flat brown eyes they

(Our eyes, Our eyes)

Swerve out into opposite directions and I am left in the middle

Unseen

Unrecognized

And then she is past but 

It’s illegal to turn around in Spain

La duelista conquistada

(Me)

There are rain specks on my lips and on the glass orange ad of Aperol Spritz

It’s alcohol, is what it is

Everybody knows it, everybody has a laughing lark off it

I didn’t know it

This brittle rain isn’t enough to fill a grape

Which is why the grapes grow over in Italy

Where Dionysus pops them with his fangs

And El Prado swoons for the shine of the wine streaming down his baby chin

So that’s how it is, then

Not in Italy, silly, but here

Where even my own kind rejects me

It was a walk of shame to the other side and I knew it

Waiting for my nose to bleed again like it did in the old tavern last week

So I could be Dionysus and taste

The farthest thing from aperol spritz

A moment of warm and pulsing pleasure

Before ducking, mortified, into the closest public bathroom

But that was last week

And today is today

Which is to say, pale gray

(Even my sweater, gray with grayer stripes, see how it’s gotten to me)

And the red in my fingers has receded

And the rud has drained from my cheeks

(I saw in the window)

It must be that my blood

Is shy of the gazes of strangers 

And I

(That is, the white stiff face in the window)

(Hardened to marble against mere breeze and drizzle)

Am nearly home

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Cycles

by: Judy Chen

Caress my face as the tides would grasp the shore, 

the beautiful shore, the ever changing shore.

Hold me back with all the love of a new devout 

and all the joy of a place by the sea. 

And in summer we will run into the sea

with full abandon, laugh as we drown. 

Sleep in nursery of rage older than us

as our bodies strip away, cast to distant shore. 

But you would pull us back. You would 

take my body into yours, breathe where I cannot. 

Submerged, you rise, posthumously kind 

and gentle to all. You would apologize to the crying moon.

By the time you bring us back it is winter

and frost has touched the corners of your face.

Worn and wane, you watch down at me

and I can not stand to see you wash away.

Alone, I sleep, in the ever leaving tide,

and alone I build our house by the shore.

Three moons try to join the sea, and deep

in the grains like a pearl you form.

Soon you will find me, my blood to your bone,

and at most we can steal but thirty bright days

before I turn away, caught against the sea

and the cool of your hand caught tight on my cheek.

You beg me not to leave, drop to your knees,

but I know where I must go. Onwards,

into the sea, the ever calling sea,

the moon a witness to the turns of the world.

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laundry

by: Sayjudenu Tukan

when I would separate the whites from the colors, and you would tell me to just throw it all in at once to save time 

when we finally agreed that the detergent smelled like both flowers and cheap dish soap

when I would smell your shirts after the wash, and they’d still have bits of you in them

when you packed your shirts neatly into that suitcase

when you left and I had to start doing laundry all by myself 

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Ethiopia

by: Naomi Samuel

“What do you call an African nation which has never been colonized?”

“Ethiopia, or Wakanda.”

Ethiopia is the only African nation to have never been colonized.

Notions of Africa untouched by savage White supremacy necessarily implicate Ethiopia.

My parents immigrated to the United States from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

My father gained political asylum in 1993 and later brought my mother over.

In 2018, I took them to see the movie Black Panther in theatres.

They enjoyed themselves, but were underwhelmed.

Afro-Futurism is the space-time bending practice necessary for my mom and I to arrive to each other’s different

constructions of Blackness.

Migration fragments my family.

I journey into her Ethiopian past while she critiques my notions of Wakandan futurism.

I fold these two layers of space against one another and relish in what pierces both planes:

My family name.

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Untitled

by: Ava Ondik

Your love was real, but it was heavy

Like a weighted blanket that comforts

But makes it hard to breathe all the same

Hard to breathe enveloped in it

Hard to sleep without it

When someone becomes your armor

Their departure leaves you exposed

And darling, you’re like a bird

You’re meant to fly

And not to carry heavy things

I got so used to suffocating

That to breathe unhindered

Made the world feel false

Distorted reality, left with walls up

Walls rendered obsolete by this lack

Just relics of your antiquated attention

Armor stripped away

Feathers can’t grow when

There isn’t space to breathe when

You’re walking on eggshells of your past when

You started to fear the sky

But darling, you’re like a bird

You can never spurn the sky forever

The eggshells you’ve been skirting

Have been shattered for weeks

You’ve just been cutting yourself

Trying to dance around

So don’t look down any longer

And behold yourself instead

Direct your gaze to the pinions

That have replaced the blanket you lost

That enhance what your armor once hid

No longer carpeted nor cloaked

Pinions grow into feathers

Feathers grow onto wings

Wings lift you away from eggshell carpets

And weighted blanket love

You can’t fly with heavy things

Cause darling, you’re like a bird

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Hour Hand

by: Sancia Milton

We were eating bananas;

We were hunched on the hood of your honda,

Backs to the windshield like bugs,

Mottled and pink from the downing sun,

Braided together from the legs up.

Like two hands of a clock—

for a second stopped—

Two hands overlapped into one.

“Do you want some of mine?”

You asked, just to share.

“Can I save it for later?”

I was dangerously close

To the peachy roots of your hair.

We were throwing peels;

We were sighing bluely into the now-dusk

As trucks mocked us with their headlights,

And there was no one to notice anything but

The softening entity of us.

We lingered in the long and lonely way

Of people who have something they would not say.

“That tasted really good,”

You whispered, tucking back your hair.

“I knew it would.”

I am lying, unwinding, unpeeling my fingers

From the sore cavity of our mutual despair;

From the naked corduroy of your coat,

From the shivering necklaces at your throat,

From the mottled memory of us, there, lingering

And gone to empty air.

The horizon of my mind

Purples over time.

My tongue swells twice its size

With something that was never mine—

Something that would not be mine.

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Meaza Leaves Ethiopia

by: Naomi Samuel

I am an Ethiopian!

What’s Wakanda to me?

White supremacy? Confused ancestry?

I’ve never known such things.

My great great grandpas…

Fought with spears and slings

Met with Italian gunpowder,

They never knew defeat.

Vibranium is a myth,

One my people do not need.

Because no colonizer,

Went colonizing,

Ethiopian me.

Ain’t that something?

I am an Ethiopian

What Wakanda would be

Anyway

Who’s to say

We don’t have

Some futuristic technology?

I am what they were.

Or I guess what they might be…

I am an Ethiopian.

What is Wakanda to me.

I am Ethiopian

And very much willingly,

Flung myself across an ocean.

Divorced myself from ancestry.

I left to know better,

So what better could there be?

My kids are doing fine,

Two scholars, one ivy league!

Why would I fret about Wakanda?

When I’ve lived impossibility?

I am an Ethiopian in America,

Living the Ethiopian’s American dream.

What is this opaque afrofuturism

But denial of my afroreality.

I am now African-American—

Not Black.

What could Wakanda do for me?

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(Horses) Still on the Fields

by: Patricia Okwueze

These horseshoes meant to armor my hooves

Have become dulled and worn out

To where the balls of my feet

Can feel the barbed bristles of this field.

It’s tattered, my mane–

Tangled like weeds or vines

Choking my bough into the thinned branches

Of the disharmonious forest.

But I must remain reliant

Else I’ll kick at the seraphic spaciousness of the sky

In rejection of my subservience,

And in jealousy of its solipsistic sight.

For even running free

Is a trap– there are fences

Still on the fields.

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To Be Alone

by: Patricia Okwueze

There’s more taunting  

Underneath the wind’s moans, 

And I lay in this trap  

Of pins and purposelessness, 

Promised of some empty companionship 

That I can’t find. 

It’s handpicked and swallowed, 

Swelled and absorbed, 

Piercing, in an over-labored train track, well-worn 

Standing fan kind of way– 

It’s the loudest nothing I know. 

Deceased heartbeats journey from soiled beds 

To the soles of these feet, to the vein in my neck-- 

Helplessly looking for the  

Charactered creak, or any sound willing to sing. 

Instead, it beats like some staccatoed saxophone, 

Like the disconnected rhythms of rained on puddles, 

Like frightened bushes and branches, unsettled from a storm. 

There’s no metronome, no tempo, to create 

A steady cadence– and my only breath 

Becomes a choking sigh.

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To Watch a Flower Die

by: Patricia Okwueze

There’s some gray  

In your stemmed stance– 

Your purples retreat to black, 

That blue becomes bleak, 

And your white, a sadder similarity of 

Stepped on snow. 

Your barely, blossomed buds 

Spread on the ground like the remnants 

Of fireworks or confetti. 

Your laughter and beauty 

Become some distant echoes 

Of the past. 

The sun no longer swells within you-- 

That sanguine spirit is gone. 

You become dots of dusted nothings 

Only to be caught by a spaced-out pupil 

Or the drifted eye. 

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Need Title

by: Patricia Okwueze

Dear God,

Give me a little life.

Pinch these cheeks and show me the color of living--

The red stained lachrymose living

In which the bitter aftertaste

Does not subtract from that sun-plucked shiver

That trickles through me like some condensated cup.

Give me a little life.

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"Ode to Apostrophes"

by: Aidan Klein

The mark of wealthy nobles, who well-versed

Do spell’th their words with commas upside-down,

Cannot put words upon their p‘per w’thout first

Using ap’str’phes upon them like’th a crown.

Alth’gh too m’ny marks are dif’cult to’n extent,

When’st phras’s can turn’st unr’ly to then compr’end,

But’th some ins’sting cit’zens can’st be’th pers’stent

And’th us’st ap’str’phes interm’n’bly and t’no end.

But’th t’much of an’th’ng c’n’only lead’st to’a fall,

And’th nine ap’str’phes are’st rel’t’v’ly, dang’r’sly close,

And’st he’th whom’st use’th ap’str’phes in opp’r’t’n’ties all

Has’st b’toff’st more’n ch’w’th and’th tak’n an unh’l’th’ dose.

And he’th has’st tr’gg’r’d, whom’st v’c’liz’d ap’str’phes from’st lips

A c’m’p’tly ent’r’ly t’t’lly d’s’strous ap’str’phe ap’c’lypse.

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The Gospel According to Pelops

by: Lila Taylor

How wondrous to be son of King!

Yet wrought from gods’ divine bouquet 

For all the day the bells will ring 

Both clouds and sun when princes neé.

Quite fortunate to be an heir!

Where riches turned playthings, turned toys;

My mother dotes, yet not my Père

Dear Father prefers older boys.

For one fortnight he disappears 

Dines with thunder, thus his victim—

The fool king laughs, makes fun, he sneers 

Atop a most illustrious kingdom.

His pockets full of nectar sweet,

Father dearest, Nouveau Midas;

For gold naught but a mortal feat

Ties man back to his lethal eidos.

Thunder arrives to dine again.

Our seats cannot contain a god 

To sit at table fit for men

His shrinking dimming false facade.

And what to serve, what shall he eat? 

Not lamb nor goat, not pig nor veal 

For surely nectar far too sweet 

Ambrosia stole, improper meal.

What better for a god than prince?

Perhaps a King, yet who would dine?

Ha ha! What fun, a god convinced 

His royal steak paired with red wine.

Yet thunder knows with godly haste 

That I reside on his high plate.

He need not raise his fork to taste 

The prince whose father loved to bait.

So father rests in water still,

Delicious fruit peripheral,

Watching man push stone uphill 

With hunger rising, visceral.

Gods wise enough to let him starve 

Nay guards or servants, rid of knights. 

Taste tempts the man who dared to carve

His flesh and blood up into bites. 

As thunder chose the petit prince,

My father has not tasted since.

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nonbinary

by: Jocelyn Chin

see this blank, peachish face. hairless

head of smooth plastic. on it i perform 30

compressions then 2 breaths. when i

imagine creation stories of an old

god (or goddess) breathing life into damp, dark

mud (shaped into a person), i can only see an

act of resuscitation – life is not composed

of air, but rather its movement and

created pressure. our days are strung together like lungs

(order consumption, disorder production) –

we exist in entropy.

this must be the fall:

the inevitability of fruits ripening,

red, the brightness of a burden borne,

teeth marks in the flesh

still fresh. gravity. i am thinking

of you both, a sibling and a lover. a past one

slips in, so I recall us underwater, blue

space choreographing us, our forces of

attraction, resistance

of pale wet limbs, kinetic chests. god exists

as my love for the sky. our eyes look everywhere

but at each other. we have embarked

on parallel-lined journeys. the body

is a liminal home. this mess of organs hides

a spirit, which is to

say, an invisible breath.

i can almost hear my voice

saying your name.