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…
Category: 2024
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….
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…
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…
Smoke Stained Clothes
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…
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,…
Volume 1, Issue 2
Poetry Giant Impact by Johnathan Everitt Moon Drops by Rekha Valliappan The Last Light by Rekha Valliappan Fiction The Cargo by Devin James Leonard Faith by Gary Zenker Winter Gallery 2024
Faith
by Gary Zenker “It’s not whether it actually works or not,” my cousin Seymour explains enthusiastically, “but whether it has the possibility of working.” That was the basis for all of his success and for the failures of anyone whom he encountered. Possibility and faith. “I know it will work given the right conditions.” I…
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…