NEW PROFILES
NEW WORK ON BARE
Leah Cashin / 12 (BARE staff)
Dreams
Stars lay spread out
in the night sky. They hang
there, a work of art;
they live.
They are bright shards of glass
that pierce through dark
depths. He dreams of space —
a black pit, a place to search
and a place to find
as he sits
in the small bed.
How did we get here? Why are we here?
He asks out loud with no one
to hear him but the moon.
He looks to the face of John Glenn,
taped to his wall. If he can
then I can — so I will.
His thoughts are as plain as that;
his goals are as clear as that.
He grasps at them, picks at them like straws.
Ten years pass.
He is not in space,
he is not filled with awe,
he does not gaze out at the
stars from up there, high in the sky.
But he is still the boy that dreamt.
Dylan Negroni / 10
i found a stink bug lying on its back in the sink while i was doing the dishes
& in between blue ceramic plates
& delicate, flower covered tea cups
i shed a tear for you
always destined to be looking backwards
stuck in your ways
even while i flush you down the drain
your prejudice remains
Jack Son / 12
i don’t think that was kombucha #2
The shape of water
geometric automation of fluid
vested upon all but itself
unveils workings of gaia beneath
and reflects essence unseen
Geometric fabric of tao
threads fates of predetermined
births vivid allegories unforetold
Geometric savant
adherent to nature's own will
ingenuine slave to its vessel
Geometric radiance
crests of crests
trough of trough
embodied dao of dao
faith of now
Nora Will / Alum
Hackberry
Anonymous / 12
An Entire World
That last day I walked those halls,
I memorized, in my head, every sight and smell --
Stored it like a sacred star.
And saw those vested men from afar
As they began to crush and fell
This world, despite my tortured calls.
Here hung those photos in their frames
Of wanderers for whom, as for me,
The pain is bitingly unbearable
And the beauty, wrenchingly terrible.
Their faces, their lives, I want to see,
and their feelings, dreams, hopes -- their names.
Here were quelled a thousand coups.
Here were written a thousand tracts.
Back there were held a thousand trysts
By a thousand newly smitten sophists.
Here we learnt a thousand facts.
Here we danced, romping a thousand shoes.
This entire world was once awake:
Here were shed a thousand tears;
Here, in lead, are a thousand sketches;
Here did sigh a thousand kvetches;
Here went by a thousand years.
This entire world is now forsaken.
And an entire world below this tired ground.
Storied remnants uncovered:
The fractured brainpan
Of a forgotten metalman.
Our selves discovered,
Our heritage finally found.
An entire world rendered formless.
An entire world
Reduced to rubble
Yet living on in a thousand minds.
Nora Will / Alum
Skunk Cabbages
Leah Cashin / 12 (BARE staff)
Compost Bin
They wriggled and squirmed
in the palm of my hand,
caked in dark, rich soil and the scraps
of last night’s dinner.
An apple core.
The brown pit
and the ridged brown skin of an avocado.
Soft and pink and pale,
They dive
beneath
the surface,
unable to see the small shadow of a hand
digging, burrowing, searching
to find what has escaped.
Nora Will / Alum
Moss
Quinn Munc / 12
The Swarm She Never Saw Coming
“Tschüss!” Mila wrote at the end of her diary entry. It was a bright, sunny Tuesday in 1926 and she didn’t have a care in the world. Mila heard the stove's timer go off behind her, and so she closed her journal and dropped her pen, then swung her head back to look at the kitchen. Her carmel hair fell elegantly, and her eyes were bright blue.
She rushed to the oven and pulled the banana bread out. She briefly took a whiff of the smell before setting it down on the countertop. The bread looked happy, like it was glad to have been baked and would be delighted to be eaten. She turned off the oven and her new timer she purchased from the store. They had only come out that year.
Raising her eye level she peered with a smile out the kitchen window at the neighbors kids frolicing in the fields of daffodils and marigolds. It was five thirty in the afternoon and she figured although they were hollering that they might as well enjoy the sun while they could. “Gluten Tag!” Mila cheered out to the children. “Gluten Tag!” They all replied. She watched them for a moment playing tag and duck- duck goose, sprinting through the grass and kicking soccer balls into the air. The fruit and horse - chestnut trees standing beside them. Mila only hoped while watching them that they were aware of the trench not far from them.
Mila shifted and put her oven gloves into a nearby drawer. Walking back into her dining room Mila brainstormed what dinner her parents would like that day and what ingredients they already had in their pantry and fridge. Mila gasped. She heard the children screaming, all of them shouting at a high pitch as loud as they could. “I knew I should’ve told them about the trench, I knew I should’ve warned them!” She told herself bursting through the door.
“They must’ve fallen and broken their legs, they’re gonna need to go to the hospital!” She worried. Running from her front door over to her back yard Mila expected to find the children in the trench crying, but instead they were still running around. Just like before. Then she noticed, they’re not running from each other, they're running from the bees.
Beehives filled the forest behind them, they must’ve hit a hive playing soccer. The children were being stung, all of them, on their faces, arms and legs, and they began to fall. One by one. Swollen from head to toe, Mila ran to them, being attacked herself. Every sting piercing her skin, and with every sting she felt less alive. And then she herself fell to the grass. And no one was running anymore.
Nora Will / Alum
Boardwalk
Hannah Myers / 10 (BARE staff)
never again will I feel the same
I walk into the Ohio feather-leafed forest,
my feet crackling with each step,
the dead bodies of old green
lying on top of moist-gut soil
ready to be decomposed
into dirt.
I look to the trees,
bare sticks poking from the soil,
their roots tangled between more roots,
spiraling out beneath the world
infinitely stretching to nothing.
I lean down and scoop
dirt into my hands,
and take a sour winter breath —
the remnants of summer —
and hear memory laugh.
I inhale my childhood once again,
and I finally let my body relax.
One day the trees will bud again
and the flowers will bloom from the mud,
but never again will I feel the same
as I did when I was young.