2018
DEAR READERS, Evaluating a plethora of submissions is no small feat, but after many hours, we finally made it through. This magazine could not be possible without the help and guidance of Mr. Wagner. We would also like to thank Colin’s Coffee for letting us host our spring open mic there. Most of all, we’d like to thank all students who submitted for their contributions to the literary magazine itself.
literary editors magnus saeboe, Bridget Reed, emily dejong arts/design editor Katie Zhao Members anna davies miranda manganaro sanam parwani clare driscoll caroline pirwitz
Cover Artwork susan kim Cover Design magnus saeboe Magazine Layout Katie Zhao 2-
BARE is but a small window into the multifaceted creativity of Upper Arlington High School students. Since not all creativity can be sandwiched between the pages of a magazine, we encourage you to keep on creating and consider submitting, either again or for your first time, to BARE Literary Arts Magazine next year. Sincerely, Katie Zhao, Bridget Noel Reed, Emily de Jong, and Magnus Saeboe BARE Editors -3
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Father Audrey Molnar
From my fatherhis level headed cognition taught me tough reason. I wish my hands were as strong. A brother’s matchbox cars, rusted ones I was afraid to touch, I had just showered. A great grandmother never met, assume she’d like medubious claims animate loss. A sisters insults towards a set of t-shirts and jeans. Wardrobe is not a presentation. She knows. The pink basement walls cinderblock and paint. A broadway stage made of sheets and storage shelves. An art studio of baskets and canvas. Dirt and plywood. Flies and a broken family above. A level head fully inherited, palms burdened by rust. I come from my father.
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<< mauretta Patitsas
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Hope jay ozello
<< susan Kim
The highest point in the city of rotting Can be the most powerful: The ghosts of vacant dreams Suffocate your feet; A churning river below, Murky with transparency; Certain despair runs for miles, Nothing seen beyond. You peer past the nothing: Afflictions subside.
apathy ariana kanchuger
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You are speaking, I know. Yet I find myself distracted by the flies on the windowsill, whose attempts at escape leave short bursts of radio static in my ears, as though I am losing contact with you.
Perhaps if I had one hundred flies I could drown out your signal entirely, and hear only a roar of silence.
^ susan Kim
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To Los Angeles and Alexander Hamilton Emily dejong
I used to know a woman who wore magenta clogs And kept the buttons that fell off of our clothes In a small box underneath her bed. Her garden was lined with cereal box pathways And perused by Alexander Hamilton, A most gentlemanly tuxedo cat. Mr. Hamilton would sit patiently while she chose her daily earrings And picked her weekly flowers, The ones she would arrange and bike to nearby stores every Sunday. I used to know a woman who wore skirts that caressed the floor And arranged her sewing threads by color In a display on the wall next to her finished jigsaw puzzles. Her garden was everyoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s garden And she would go door to door and ask if she could use othersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; green space, Because her backyard had no room for more thistles. Mr. Hamilton would bat around pieces of string while she made waffles And whipped egg whites into oblivion, To keep her sons coming home every Saturday for breakfast. I know a woman who left for Los Angeles on a red motorcycle, With a yellow stuffed bunny in the passenger seat, Because she never would leave her childhood friend behind. Her garden became overgrown And Mr. Hamilton no longer wandered through the thistles, Because he became curious and investigated the underside of a Toyota Prius. And Alexander Hamilton never made it to Los Angeles. But when her red motorcycle sputtered down Sunset Boulevard And you could just make out two braids underneath her helmet, You could tell she was home And that somewhere, Alexander was happy for her.
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^ Susan Kim
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Deja vu mimi cai
To know that you walked into a room To walk into it again All too familiar, Yet, All too strange, To walk into it again; To know that you walked into a room.
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> Susan Kim >>
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red-yellow-green joshua gorski
Red-yellow-green, Flashing on the silence The road has to offer. The Green allows the man To drive past his rationale His reasoning for driving At 3AM each day. He aimlessly runs over His emotions. Like speed bumps They cry to catch His attention. Still he maintains speed, His car: deteriorating with every bump. The Yellow sends a chill up his spine In an instant reaction He decides Whether he is to continue Or stop. His emotions give Him the opportunity To think Instead the man chooses to speed up Without question. The Red throws his emotions In front of him Like a pedestrian on the road Forcing him to come to a halt. The man neglects the light He decides to not face
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<< mauretta patitsas
What keeps him on the road at night. His emotions lay hindered on the asphalt Run over. The White crashes into him, Allowing his mind to ignite For a split second Before his rationale is lost Forever. The man, now stopped, Sits waiting for the red lights To pick him up, And send him and his mind away From the road.
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winter wafteD in ariana kanchuger
My head rests on a crystal pane, cool like a sheet of rippling ice Stars twinkle out as dark wanes The horizon gently glows and sparkles Beams of peach light filter â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;round my figure Giving soft blush to the mist Which coils round the honeysuckle, demure, Shy to rustle newborn peace
<
A soft blanket of snow caresses the earth And makes pearls of pebbles, Elegant wedding cakes of benches, Lace drapery of pine trees The sight feels shared, passed from eye to eye Since a day in 1954, Since the sun would pink, the clouds would curl, The wren would sing to say goodbye Since the room was built, the picture framed, The winter wafted in years ago
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<< katie zhao
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paradigm morgan leff
The wind shook the blue trees and there was Silence. The constant Careful Continuum Of the frivolity of perception Eats the minds and hearts Of those To which it gives life.
victoria wu ^
irony morgan leff
^ sarah garzon
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There are leaves on trees sometimes. Just like there are cars on streets sometimes And words on sentences Sometimes. We all go searching For conditionality, For probability For hope.
Then we can say That after the ripping claws Tearing at the seams of Definite clarity There will be peace As mandated by The certainty Of uncertainty.
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Lost at sea ariana kanchuger
There were no clouds Above the scene An endless sky An endless sea Where swollen sun Hung heavily Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;er mirror ocean Stilled by breeze Two figures sleep Against the side Of wooden boat Red drips and dries As outstretched hands With keening cries Sail softly towards Their demise
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<< elle Changizi
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our dead world audrey blue
The moon shines down On the bank of the Mississippi I sit and watch A red roaring fire. You play with the dog On the shore, Kicking up sand, pausing for a drink. The dog wags its tail Ignorant. Our world is dying. In 1945, May 8, We hoped we were done With it all. It was not to be. I envy the dog. The dog is ignorant Of the death of our world.
The creature flies out And I sigh. It is a bird. You can never know what else survived The death of our world. We have seen creatures Of tooth and claw. I throw the rock. Red blood stains white feathers. You cradle the bird, Once a swan, Now broken and twisted As our dead world
Something is in the trees. I pick up a chunk of limestone.
^ lily nelson
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orange Flower Yara Khasawneh
The orange sun pushes through the east Arising for the world to see Like an african daisy Sprouting its petals The orange flowerhead Gardened in the soil Next to the orange fire Filled with burning coal Turning to ash And tossed in the trash Cover the hands in black at A single touch Dammed at the darkness The orange flowerhead Picked from the ground Maria walking down the fields By the baskets Falling to her knees
emma wang >>
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<< sarah garzon
aquamarine Saskia Vitzthum
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It was in the beginning When everything started. Fire roared Blazes stung the skin. New layers New inhabitants Came to thrive. Red fire turned to stone. Fur was spread across the surface And new air entered the space. A cry A screech A croon Every sound was put to words Shapes of wildest shapes Formed and sat on that dirty area. Big ate small Small ate tiny And life started thriving.
The woman is staring with her blue, tired eyes at the greasy louse on the dog’s neck. She keeps hoping, that he won’t lick his claw. “And don’t eat it.” What? Staying in front of the Hudson Riverthe second of March two thousand and sixteen. The aquamarine stone in her hand. When she flew away, she didn’t think about you. Who? Is that the person she once loved? The memories in her mind. Not the best feeling she ever had but nothing worse would come.
thrive yana williams
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unsaid goodbyes sydney badgeley
On the eve of my going, You are sending rocks up for the clouds to catch and to drop back into the Scioto. I sit and stroke the head of the lazy yellow dog that now belongs to You. There isn’t much to say. I can see your mouth working, trying to give a name to this feeling, but there isn’t one. So here I sit on this last August afternoon in-the-flesh at your side, yet you refuse to see me. Instead a piece of flint, with edges all rough and unrounded, catches your eye.
^ Grayson cook
You know it is my favorite stone to find, as you turn it over in your hands, and finally send it too flying into the sky. There isn’t much to say. I can see that as I sit under the sun of this bright August Tuesday. You are already enveloped by the coming dusk, when I have gone into the blackened night.
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into the falls zane wulliger
The docks begin to fade away With every stroke. The paddle begins to bendAs splinters impale into my hands. Mist illuminates the sky As a thick fog wraps around me Covering everything in sight. Gushing sounds echo Closer and Closer. Fear strikes my heart Like a whistling arrowâ&#x20AC;Ś Yet the next corner I turn Shows the unseen The power of the fall, Wash the fear away inside And instead, Brings out something, That usually hides. My eyes wide Beyond the world of Belief Pouring and Pouring Never ending
<< emma wang
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An Eternity Daniel Ibba
<< victoria wu
She Was a Storm Alicia Howe
Outside the sky became a battlefield of invisible soldiers ramming their misty bodies into one another. Their battle cries are so loud they shake the walls and memories fall to the floor in the form of picture frames.
I’m only imagining a snow that packs and shapes into molds, from my pressed handprints, like they would in skin, or like marigolds that swim breathlessly on snow melted by bodies in the late winter. No other paths trail like your arms, I’ve walked on them before––frail, like midnight eyes, and storms so delicate–the light that harms the dirt rests erratically, the best cloud is all the water that matters to me.
My hands only fall through pines like a brush on a snow that’s slushed by battered footprint. It’s not like snow, your hair, neglect and disciplined disarray means our pillows have never been more perfect. My hand is a flower that winds down unruly paths, my eyes are not lonely, but i’m the only one who finds perfect pleasure in what created me– both of my eyes will know your breath is an eternity.
aware of how I’ve come to be in this room of barren walls and broken mirrors. The warriors continue to clash about, drenching the innocent with drops of their brothers blood. I remain safe while their cold fingers rip tower-
Fluorescent purple lights break into ing pine trees from their roots and the room, toss crashing through the window, sending them carelessly aside, not caring spears of broken glass into my soft rag doll of a body. And suddenly I’m
who she hurt as long as she got what she wanted, which it seemed no one understood.
<<Victoria Wu
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^
josh mudrick
a prehistoric lament minjue wu
It was 500 million years ago and quarks havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t married each other in protons and neutrons yet. They figure out their bonding and the universe was molecularly connected at an accelerating breakage rate. A love of beauty prompts God to fashion the unforgiving earth. Savages wander on land. They sow, reap seeds and children. The church bell was invented so time could speak in hourly intervals. The first bride steps atop an altar. Her family sacrifices her white veil to her husband. Then the rest of her goes with him to the marriage bed. The marriage bed was strong. One of its legs roots into the earth, a trunk of stone. The husband leaves for ten years and is replaced by a Grecian loom, for a woman cannot hold unbendable bows in his stead. Solitude. Then the marriage bed changes countries for four or fifteen times, and the leg stays strong, roots refusing to die. The loom is already in the earth. It festers its broken parts. The soil is rich and grows a cornucopia. An Indian child draws a cornucopia on cheap tatami mats on the seventeenth factory line in Bombay. When she works enough money to run from her caste, she will build a new church bell for the wedding. Now there is a new bed and cornucopia. This one spews technology and likes and hearts on the lovebed, but it is empty and the roots are gone â&#x20AC;&#x201D; there are too many hearts and not enough bodies.
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TEXTBOOK Samantha davis
When I am wading through The time-tinted waters of history, When I stand so that the water Comes above my kneesMaybe even up to my neckI often find that the pebbles Beneath my feet Glow like vibrant Peridot, And occasionally I will come upon An emerald. They cling like louse-eggs To the gnarled, tangled curls of Years gone passed. Reduced to yellowed pages, They come to me on paper, Like wings clipped from a bird, They pose, dry mouth agape And eyes unblinking. Praying For someone, anyone, to say Their name. For eventually the empire Is bound to return to dust; The Mongols and the Magna Carta, The Panama Canal and King Philip I, You, who makes this long trudge Through history, Desperately measuring the depths Of your footprints, You must remember that The sands of time Will wipe all trace of This world away.
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samantha davis >>
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pasmodic light pulsing breaking coagulating in pure unadulterated nostalgia.
I sit and he is with me, a plagiarized right from my perverse wish for a touch.
ariana kanchuger
<
Rewritten minjue wu
History can repeat I clench my eyelids shut them to village hymns until the stars invert in bright daylight. A sleevebrush then nothingness, impatient tapping of the foot, familiar hands undulating in carnival savageness, throb of veins but no NO2 in between sculpted joints to crack and pop. Could this be more than —
no the illusion is back. In a miller’s house, canaries flee from a waterwell and sing for their other feather. Radiance in the moment who can ask for more. One questioned me if there is a difference between loving and being in love. I had laughed at you — I’m sorry, bird, but I can’t hold your cuckoo warmth to my breast and give you the sugary emptiness another craved from me once. I want calculation and plans ripped newspaper clippings overtagged grocery shopping lists that still bear my fingernails’ carvings from when we first met, all simple times and hidden figures amidst ticking infinity. Now that I sit here, your/his knee tapping to alternate dimensioned sound, and I’m no longer sacrificing my innards to a pagan toilet bowl, can we pretend none of that happened?
concrete jungle Our concrete jungle is ripe with bursting spirits, Those whose jubilation or passion burns in their bellies, Presses against their inner-skin and fills it With the green lush of bright vitalities Others carry a spark that takes root in their granite tendons, A small spark inside that snaps their movements to a tense simmer, Quick and clipped as they stalk through mobs of roiling momentum
Or frenzied and flustered as they twitter at a person Miles away from the current chaos of color above the Hudson The fervor froze one beautiful September day Killing the cacophony for an instant in the second wave But like a forest after a wildfire, we lend our brightness, Passion, Relentlessness, Love, What was burned regrows fresh and flushed against the wounds of the world
evelyn thomas >>
Let’s go to the land of dark-skinned goddesses and Jamaican coconuts. The jewels lie there on the beach, and I want to be one of them in your eyes as wide as a milk-black striped conch shell. I was never the ideal but I want to be, for me not you for me for me for me. Honestly. And I want to burn the ground under your pen to lava and ash, because and but you’re writing of another her while I stay, nub deep in stagnant ink for a story that was over before
we started
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THey Went on walking Susan Glaser
Roaring winds, Howling wolves, And billowing smoke, Ringing through the Wide open desert. Fear blanketed the whole group, Leaving little room for Any type of preparedness They had brought along. They waddle through The sandy terrain. The Apogee of their fright occuring, As the sun started to set, Leaving them with the light Of the small single lantern, Representing the new
lives They’re in search of. It seemed so close, But was so far from Their reach, and so they Went on, walking. The winds turned cold, And the ground Started to chill, Their moods changed cold too. The fear washed away and the Anger started to flow, Oh, the anger started to flow! Their paces widened as the Sparks grew. The determination To just get there was shared.
They were just leaving without A care. “Almost there, almost there,” Mother’s reassured their children. Standing hand in hand, They faced the motherland. Ready for their new lives. But as close as they got, they never Made it. Lost in time, lost in fear, lost in anger, and lost in determination. Leaving little room for Any type of preparedness They had brought along.
^ josh mudrick
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<< Katie Zhao
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<< josh mudrick
words, words, words
>
savannah stearmer
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Shatter Shiver Shake Embrace I lie awake at night, it’s always far too late, and I think about words Toil Bubble Revenge Extend Words that buzz through my mind and seek to escape Dazzle Sigh Measure Lie Thousands, millions, trillions of words At the tips of my fingers Resting on my tongue Waiting for the chance to be free Bask Climb Center Find How are there still more? Stories, ideas, half-baked thoughts all begging to be realized
All fighting for a chance to be seen Cluster Dust Star Creation I want to comply To let them live To let them breathe Write Write Write But there’s always more More More And even more Something else to write Something else to focus my attentions on But isn’t that beautiful? The desperation? The frantic crawl? The victory that’s always seen but never found? Isn’t there something wonderful in that struggle? Isn’t that worth it?
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