The speaker is a lonely, self-conscious poet wandering through a neon-lit 1950s California supermarket while shopping for images. Feeling isolated by the consumer-driven postwar American society surrounding him, he seeks artistic connection by invoking the spirit of his literary idols. His perspective acts as the lens through which the modern world is contrasted with the past.

Whitman is the famous nineteenth-century American poet, appearing in the text as an imagined companion walking through a mid-twentieth-century supermarket. He wanders the aisles inspecting modern groceries and observing the workers, representing an older version of America. To the speaker, he serves as a paternal figure and a fellow outsider.

Lorca is a renowned Spanish poet whom the speaker imagines seeing in the produce section. He stands apart from the traditional families filling the aisles, representing another marginalized literary ancestor who shares the speaker's sense of isolation in modern society.

In Greek mythology, Charon is the ferryman who transports the dead to the underworld. Within the poem's concluding image, he leaves Whitman on the banks of the river Lethe. He serves as the dividing line between Whitman's past America and the speaker's modern reality.

The young men working in the neon fruit supermarket. They become the subjects of Whitman's fascination and his strange unanswerable questions about the origins of the food and their spiritual nature.

A figure of authority operating within the supermarket. The speaker imagines being trailed by this detective while wandering the aisles with Whitman, adding a layer of paranoia to the nighttime excursion.