As a supplement to our main issue of The Closed Eye Open, we have an ongoing feature called Maya’s Micros. As the name suggests, it will be curated by contributing editor Maya Highland and will exclusively feature short form writing.
Since it can be a long wait between issues, we’ve decided to keep the creativity rolling by focusing on the littlest form of creative writing—micros. Whether you consider them micro-poems or micro-fictions, they are welcome here…as long as each individual piece is 108 or fewer. (Why 108, you may ask? Have fun speculating…)
We like the idea of saying a lot in a small space–the complexity of self-expression in balance with an economy of language. And of course, since they are short, they can be enjoyed within a few moments–perhaps a line or phrase sticking with you to carry along for a while.
We will update Maya’s Micros in small “batches” a few times per month until our next full issue is ready for release.
If you like what you see and would like to get e-mail updates, please e-mail us at theclosedeyeopen@gmail.com.
Click here to submit your micros for publication.
Also, you may follow us on Instagram @theclosedeyeopen.
The Sea
When you rush forward
into the pounding sea
remember the muted world
below the churn.
It needs no light.
It needs not to declare itself.
It waits quietly for all things to sink.
A place where all that is lost
settles into the cold dark stillness.
Jasmine
He was out from Oakland down from Chicago
It was an early-May morning after a stay-up night at the Gentlemen’s Club
The Azaleas didn’t care she wore six-inch clear stiletto’s
She laughed a lot the flowers were her stage-friends
Daffodil Miss Magnolia
Lotus blossom La Lady Duchesse
Her teeth Viburnum-white
Her lips Daylily-pink
They were in love in the Missouri Botanical Gardens
They would reunite in thirty days
He went back and waited anxious at first not noticing the orchids
He realized after six hours the Dendrobiums would be his only company
He went home to Oakland his apartment stripped bare
He was not surprised only disappointed
A Door to the Sea
Oh, to have a door
Of eight panes of glass
that opens onto the sea.
No need for a deadbolt,
a lock or a key
for no one will use it
’cept the ocean and me.
Haiku for Able
This paper is glass.
Crystalline like fine china.
I can see through it
but it’s distorted.
It daunts an ageless being;
indiscernible,
like a grain of sand
on a beach in a raving
storm that has no end.
It is all glass, and
like scars from long ago wars,
I forget it’s there.
Lol
Sometimes, most people that like people
like me, and most times some people
that don’t like people like me, because
I’m mostly not like most people that like
me, though sometimes not unlike some.
Pamela Hill Epps’ work has most recently appeared in the anthology, 101 Jewish Poems For The Third Millennium (Ashland Poetry Press) as well as in other literary publications such as Heartwood Literary Magazine, The Sandhill Review, Poetica, and Wild Violet. She has a chapbook titled A Last Glance, published by YellowJacket Press. She is a psychologist, poet, and jazz musician living in Tampa, FL with her partner and cat. She spends a great deal of time looking out at the river.
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Tim Stiles lives in the San Francisco-Bay Area. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. His poetry-photography collaboration with photographer Jay Tyrrell, entitled Botmerica: Repeat After Me, was published in 2016. He won the Seven Hills Review 2020 Creative Nonfiction Award for his story, “Bizzy Bone’s Cousin,” is the recipient of LitFest Pasadena’s 2021 Jonathan Gold Award, and won the 2021 Thirty West Publishing Broadside Pt. 2 competition. He wrote the lyrics to two Kurt Elling songs: “What Word” and “A Thousand Stars.” He is currently working on the lyrics to a country album.
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James Patrick Lockett, is a former stand-up and script doctor, recovering from 25 years in Hollywood, searching for a voice beyond TV dialogue. He has published short fiction, plays, and poetry, as well as his monthly column “…let ill tidings tell!” for AFRAID Magazine. His work has previously been featured in Maya’s Micros, with two poems forth coming in the Anthology Lockdown 2.022 (August 2022, Willowdown Books). His 2nd chapbook Threadbare (Sour Grapes Press) will be available in November. Until then, Lockett can be found, as always sipping coffee and writing. More morsels and breadcrumbs can be found on his blog www.thehyenakitchen.blogspot.com.
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Jack Galati is a writer living in Arizona. His fiction and poetry has appeared in a number of magazines and journals.
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Eric Wittkopf holds a couple degrees and has published a couple poems, most recently in High Shelf Press and Sepia Quarterly. He won first place in a themed contest run by House Journal in 2021.
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Dust
Human? I would have preferred
to be jade green,
or a whole note played on a cello, or
40 degrees below zero.
If I had to be matter?
Then some distant, nuclear-firing sun.
Or — a crimson-hearted heap
of charcoal and ash.
Never this
wet, breathing anguish
in the brief interval between.
Box of Books
$2.50
With the dollar down and prices rising
like floodwater, we all need a way out,
a place to go when the room shrinks,
the heat turned low, the phone lines cut,
and what better than a book
to row to another, safer shore?
That’s not just a rhetorical question, folx.
With this box of mostly mystery
and sci-fi thrillers you can be someone
else with a whole other set of problems
(who to love, who to kill, which alien nation
to form alliances with). Nothing as boring
as unemployment or as complicated as
untreated depression. Nope, these books
are certain to carry you away.
At the Creek
1.
each shadow a small
promise of what can still be
revealed: way-making light.
2.
earth altars, nosegays:
honeysuckle, white sage, pine.
i need my body.
3.
we follow the deer tracks
to the black cottonwood tree
and wait in silence.
4.
my breath catches at
each feather. what has happened
to my winter wings?
5.
i offer myself
a bouquet of rosemary,
wind, and wild prayers.
Summer of ’69
I saw Jamey’s sour face as he got in.
“What happened you couldn’t say on the phone?”
“My dad.”
“What?”
“They’re getting divorced.”
“No. He tell you tonight?”
“Just now. Over fucking meatloaf.”
“Were they fighting?” I drove us anywhere.
“He has a girlfriend. I don’t even have a girlfriend. I’m the teenager.”
“How’s your mom?”
“Wouldn’t talk. Just smoked.”
“I’m sorry.” I’d never told him I was sorry.
“Yeah,” he said. “Don’t tell anyone.”
“Not me.”
“God, school will be awful when it starts. No one else has divorced parents.”
“You wanna go get high?”
“Yeah.”
I turned toward the park.
A Lifetime Acquainted with Bandits III
One sleepless night, while I stared at
re-runs two shining eyes appeared
at the French doors. This bandit too
found vampire slayers amusing.
Squatting on her haunches with nose
to glass, she ignored me in the
semi dark. Fascinated, we
watched these struggles of not so good
versus not so evil until
the credits rolled and she sauntered
away, musing over visions.
MW Field’s work has been published in journals including Canadian Literature, Event, and Snapdragon Journal. One of her chapbooks won the bp nichol Chapbook Award, and an animated film she created of one of her poems was shown in a film festival of short works. A performance of some of MW Field’s poems was presented last fall at a festival of mythic arts. This poet currently makes her living selling phones in a shopping mall.
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Todd McKinney’s work has appeared in journals such as Defunct, Monkeybicycle, Smartish Pace, Cimarron Review, storySouth, Puerto del Sol and others. He teaches at Ball State University and serves as a Managing Editor for River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative.
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Alison Davis is an educator, author, and activist living in Northern California. She holds degrees from Very Prestigious Universities but considers her willingness to be like Rumi and gamble everything for love as her highest credential. Her writing has appeared in numerous scholarly and literary publications, including The Sun and SAUTI: Stanford Journal of African Studies.
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Robert Bires lives and writes in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Trying to keep his social media interactions positive, he tweets as @1GreatSongADay and posts on Instagram as @Cooking_With_Bob.
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K. L. Johnston is a poet and photographer whose favorite subjects are whimsical, environmental, and /or philosophical. Her poetry has appeared in journals ranging from Small Pond Magazine in the 1980s to work recently appearing in Humana Obscura and Pangyrus. She is a contributing poet to the newly released anthology Botany of Gaia. She is passionate about her garden, a good cup of hot tea, and 85% dark chocolate.
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