by Ava Grace I was soft handed till you took my hands into yoursDo you see these scars? They are yours, from all the words i’ve writtenAnd I thought I knew who I was but I don’t anymoreI don’t know anything cause how could you get to me so easilyYou’re like smoke stuck to my…
Category: 2024
Longing
by Steve Fay What sleeps inside your form, your hair, your bone?Ever it expands as breath—or does it stifle,as the unvoiced consonant inside that name?As the weight of the awaiting train.As the tractor rolling over that dead boywho stopped going to your school.As memory of the beads of mercury your finger nudgedaround the linoleum floor,…
Standing and Stages
by Grace Jaycox Your father ushers you up on the stage with three other people, one of which is your mother. You look up at her as she adjusts the microphone so it’s the right height for her. The fact that you’re too small to reach any of the microphones was supposed to be a…
Pajama Tales
by Abhishek Udaykumar It was when she said ‘subliminal,’ one afternoon, that I found myself quite still. Once again – in the cool corridors, like a mired leaf still staggering after autumn. She had said nothing after that. I listened to the carpeted choir that rose to the ceiling. Fitting myself perfectly in a zeitgeist…
Volume 1, Issue 3
Poetry Smoke Stained Clothes by Ava Grace Longing by Steve Fay Reassembling Love by R. Gerry Fabian Fiction Pajama Tales by Abhishek Udaykumar Standing and Stages by Grace Jaycox Special Section: FLCC Fall 2024 Creative Writing Graduates The Bare Hill Review owes a tremendous debt to the creative writing students at Finger Lakes Community College….
Reassembling Love
by R. Gerry Fabian She goes to the blanket chest, rummages aroundand pulls out a folder marked, ‘love directions.’Slowly unfolding it on the farm table,she is surprised by the length.Still, she jots down noteson the lined yellow pad next to her: Hold hands.Passionate kisses.A gift for no reason.Date night.Couch cuddles.A favorite meal.Afternoon intimacy. She sighs…
The Last Light
by Rekha Valliappan I seek no shadowed earth, no moonstruck face when the yard is snowy full. When north winds waft over snake pits, silent as bats in flight one cave to the next, I wheel the acceleration, dig the bare bones of shoveled invigoration to final flare. I see no bloom transforming each blowing…
Moon Drops
by Rekha Valliappan Once I had two wooers. One was an angled cow, the other was a spirited blackbird. The cow ruminated love letters to me with grassy metaphors, I never fully understood. The blackbird pecked my fingertips in polished pearls, fashioned from early morning dew drops, I did. At that moment in time I…
Giant Impact
by Jonathan Everitt Hypothesis inspired by a myth, we named her Theia,for a Titaness. The size of Mars, her failed orbitsent her hurdling toward Earth, still a molten sea. Direct hit fused two planets’ iron cores, reset our axis,separating autumn from spring. Theia’s violent endmade a merged Earth enveloping a parasitic iron twin. And we…
The Cargo
by Devin James Leonard It was after midnight and had been storming since the start of Buckley and Teale’s three-hundred-mile drive across New York State. Two hours into their journey, just outside the Winona State Forest, the snow blanketed the road, causing the wheels to lose traction and slide unpredictably. This was dangerous weather for…