As a supplement to our main issues 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,” 1-2 times per month.
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.
Panicking in Trees
I don’t love change.
I shift and move—
but my rhythms stay the same.
Some call it repetitive.
Others ask for more adventure.
What can I say?
I know the environment I’m built for.
Can you blame a bear
for avoiding the sea?
Or fault a shark
for panicking in the trees?
Oh, what a mess we’d make
if we insisted on becoming deities.
I know my habits.
Call it rigidity—
or humility.
Duplex :: Paper Thin
The dividing wall was less than a wall.
We could hear the neighbors living.
The neighbors could hear us living.
Their living was not our living.
The sound of their living was not our living:
it lacked the arguments, the doors slamming, the cars skidding.
Shouting, slamming, skidding—
through it all the dividing wall stood,
as through it all the living stood divided.
They are too numerous to name,
(if not too numerous to blame).
It all happened a long time ago:
It is all happening now.
The dividing wall is more than just a wall.
Short Story
To cut a long story short
To prolong the narrative
To mime the diegesis
To eliminate all details
To dwell on the unnecessary
To shroud the backstory
To indulge in the past
To shout to all that listen
To whisper to oneself
To avoid splitting the infinitive
To evade to divide to ignore
To cut a long story short
I waited for the light to change
Queen Bee Was Able to Sting Repeatedly
Sister
twirled
boys like
loose
strands
of hair
shaping them
into the beehive
she wore
in her crowning
pileup; untouchable
from the neck up
Orchestral
On his days off he heads
for the park to listen to
his favorite sound: a soloist
playing a cello. Before he was born
his heart was built out of broken
instruments, ones with life left
in their frets and valves. His
remind him of the migration
of caribou or hail against
a shingled roof. Their clatter
rattles the cells of his heart
and he floods like a basement.
There he sits, content to let
the weather flay him
with its frayed and faded bow.
Ryan Bolding is a poet and therapist based in Seattle. His work explores grief, queerness, mythology, and the contradictions of modern life. He has been published or is forthcoming in Cathexis Northwest, Fjords Review, and Neon Origami.
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Steven Cordova’s full-length collection of poetry, Long Distance, was published by Bilingual Review Press in 2010. His poems have appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, The Journal, New Orleans Review, Notre Dame Review, Los Angeles Review, and Pleaides. From San Antonio, TX, he lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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Edward D. Miller is a 65-year old queer writer and educator. He is nearing retirement from the City University of New York. Links to his published work, which includes both nonfiction and poetry, can be found at worksbyedwarddmiller.com.
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Carole Symer is the author of the chapbook, Glint (Harbor Editions). A psychologist who works primarily with neurodiverse adolescents, her interviews, reviews, and poems have appeared in publications such as The Adroit Journal, Tupelo Quarterly, and LIT Magazine. She teaches at New York University.
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A former bar owner, SM Stubbs was born & raised in South Florida. His first book, Learning to Drown (Gunpowder Press), was released in January 2025. He has been on scholarship and a staff scholar at Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Nominated for the Pushcart, and Best of the Net, his work has appeared Poetry Northwest, Puerto del Sol, New Ohio Review, Cimarron Review, The Rumpus, and others. More information can be found at smstubbs.com.
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The Red and the Black
musings on patterns of soldier beetles
Chauliognathus marginatus
Red wings Black wings
Solid color Balanced in pastoral shading
A blank composition Written in ebon ink
Unvarnished, uniform crimson Veined in sable
Simple Glory
Almanac
you spoke of luck
as we planted seeds
after danger of frost had passed
searched the sky
for signs of rain
a map unfolded on dashboard dust
hid summer hunger
in night’s close curves
and the understory of tamarack trees
Breaking
It’s a haunted house, obviously, me as the ghost.
Blank clocks, empty stairwells.
It’s a metaphor. I’m sure you’ve guessed.
The house has devoured me whole.
Siphoned little things, important things.
How I parted my hair, how you took your tea.
I am illiterate to proper forms of grief.
Only damp cellars, attics, abandoned tea sets.
I tripped on my heavy veil gliding between dark rooms.
I looked for you in the parlor but you are gone.
The house has taken you, too. It left an outline of you
in the bed.
I think it tries, on occasion, to make me happy.
Self Portrait of the Poet I
Call me shattered
glass brushed off a shelf
Call me knifed
edges and blind panic
Call me thorns
tucked under soft petals
Call me a grasping
thing all tooth and spit
Call me dirt
pebbles laced underfoot
Call me anything except
a thing ruined a thing person a thing caged
E. R. Lutken worked on the Navajo Nation as a physician for many years, then taught middle and high school science and math in rural Colorado for a few more. Her poetry collection, Manifold: poetry of mathematics (3: A Taos Press, 2021) won the New Mexico First Book Award for 2022. Recently she edited her father’s memoir, A Thousand Places Left Behind: One Soldier’s Account of Jungle Warfare in WWII Burma (University Press of Mississippi, 2023). Website: https://www.erlutkenpoetry.com
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Samantha Malay’s poetry was recently published in Blood Tree Literature and The Passionfruit Review. C&R Press long-listed her chapbook, Inland, for their Summer Tide Pool Award (2024), Steel Toe Books short-listed her chapbook, Realm (2023), and Shark Reef Magazine nominated her poem “Between” for a Pushcart Prize (2020). She grew up in rural northeastern Washington State, where her family built a cabin with timbers salvaged from an abandoned homestead, hauled water from a creek, and read by kerosene lamp. Her experiences in that time and place continue to shape her work.
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Ashling Meehan-Fanning is a poet based in Wisconsin whose work often includes themes of magic, ancestry, and the American Midwest. She spends a lot of time thinking about ghosts and trees. Website: poemsbyashling.com
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Susan Page Deutsch is a writer and editor hailing from Norfolk, Virginia. She currently resides in Wales, where she is braving an MSc at Cardiff University. She teaches online youth creative classes at The Muse Writers Center and is a former intern and fiction reader at New England Review. Previous work has appeared in Fatal Flaw Lit, Red Ogre Review, and Tangled Locks Journal.
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Kat Schmidt is an author and artist from Michigan. Their work can be found in Orion, The Inquisitive Eater, the citizen trans* {project} by new words {press}, and in Wingless Dreamer’s Echoes of Midnight anthology. Their work is forthcoming in Beyond Word’s Father’s anthology.
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April Fire
A sudden flutter—
grey feather
a bird
nest-hunting
down the flue
caught among
burning papers
her wings
a bellows
her eyes
my mirror
The Grand Canyon
Most people admire
this abyss,
come to view what ensues
from water’s treachery.
A triumph of erosion,
like a lie.
What falls from heaven
falls to the river, cuts,
creates a chasm only wind
and lightning cross.
What eats at substance
creates—
Dusk
Carving a bird out of a tree branch in the yard, the old man’s wrinkled ring finger tingled, then disintegrated and wafted to the ground like the spiral slivers of wood pulp departed by his knife. He came apart: toes turned to a plume of dust poured from his boots onto the floor of his bedroom; a chunk of thigh running down his leg to pile on the bathmat; and when he reached to scratch an earlobe, his fingertips pressed together instead. Later, he stood in front of the mirror, and watched his withered body dissolve until a single silver smudge on the glass was all that remained.
Bedtime Routine
Upsideways staring through the sliding door
to the tree that overlooks me
Underlit watered-down burning in the streamcold orange dusk
I watch my pulse
on the soft underbelly of my arm
It only lasts moments
The most content I’ve felt in years
The house is a hurricane
Not the aftermath, an active hurricane
Half-empty water glasses next to full-empty beer bottles next to unread books next to
How do we own so many pairs of shoes?
To find pants for them I pretend I need a shirt
I hear the beep of your treadmill
I’ll be up here a while
I’m looking forward to our half-hour together
Falling asleep to a movie
No New Ghosts
The egg may never boil in my hand,
won’t be eaten,
or cracked
by the tap tap of a silver spoon.
Still,
it is safe to rot,
and
if it were to break,
oozing in my palm,
all its hurts are only my own,
easily sopped by sour toast.
No new ghosts,
weightless fingers on shoulderblades,
as the pan
sizzles and pops.
I tense as the soul’s oil
settles on my skin,
singes my hair.
Their touch is kind,
soft, understanding, slow,
but
the drums of my ears beat on
beware beware.
Elli Samuels is a poet whose work has been anthologized and published in numerous literary journals including Maudlin House, Pif Magazine, Penn Journal of Arts and Sciences, and Tulsa Review. A cookbook author, runner, and yogi, Samuels recently relocated to Little Rock, Arkansas.
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Valerie L. Egar lives and works in Maine. Her poetry has been published in Barrow Street, River Styx, Lull Water Review, Poetry Northwest, and other journals. She has studied at The New School in New York and is currently working on a speculative novel, tentatively titled A Year Under the Sea. When she is not writing, you can find her treasure hunting at local flea markets. Follow her on Facebook, and find out more at valerielegar.com.
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Meghann Blackman is a 2024 graduate of UNC-Wilmington’s MFA program. Currently, she teaches fourth grade in Wilmington, NC. A native of Southern Appalachia, Meghann’s writing applies a speculative lens to the intricacies of family and place. Her work has been published in miniskirt magazine.
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Matthew Taylor Blais is a Canadian artist who has primarily made experimental movies. His work has had success screening around the world, including VIFF, TIFF, and the Berlinale. In 2022 he began writing poetry, and has recently given it his full attention. Matthew currently lives in Coquitlam with his wife and daughters. He has had criticism and poetry published on The Collidescope.
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Matt Thompson is an Atlanta-based writer and teacher. He lives with his elderly beagle.
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Held
Act as if an
opening. Fear
is a guide.
At a certain
point, traffic is
a race. I am letting
go of innards
wound clockwise,
receipts for trips
around the sun. I
give my shadow
the night off: that
winged shape,
taloned, green;
it is not meant
for you. So, it
drops and splinters
and the crash stokes
heart-fire and
my forearms curve
onto your shoulders.
The Cathedral Virgin Wears a Sleeveless Summer Dress
Itinerant pigeon
flapping approval
for lemony
bold shoulders
glowing
in the Roman
cathedral.
Home
if you are the only bottlecap on the shore a crab will find you and you will become his home
one night as you walk to sleep under oleander on the steep bank edging the frontage road you step right out of your shoes a woman passing in a car notices the shoes and thinks of you and of the things she’s lost and left behind hoping someone has made use of them and from your shoes she makes a poem
Grief (as a Rocket) — For my Sister
After Claire DeVoogd
Unconvinced by your absence,
thinking, if you could call it thinking then,
of black leather and jet fuel,
how much I would need
and the endurance required
to circle the earth, propelled,
or so it seemed, deep into space—
wondering if I might find you
and leave the lunar orbit,
or be stuck, as I am still,
untethered to the earth,
with your black leather bag
promising protection and deliverance,
among the nebulae and rubble
here, where there is no sound.
Photosynthesis
The sun’s devotion
infuses an alchemical warmth
creating an angelic metamorphosis
The bodies of leaves
uninhibited
given life to exponentially stretch out
Its intricate veins
full of green blood
absorbing love
emitting charged
euphoric oxygen
James Ducat’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Penn Review, Carve, CutBank, Gordon Square Review, has been featured on Verse Daily, and is anthologized by The Inflectionist Review and others. His chapbook A Field of Nopes is from Bamboo Dart Press. IG: @ducatpoetphotographer / Bluesky: @ducatpoet
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Maureen Martinez is an emerging writer and irreverent woman of faith working as a counselor at an all-boys Catholic high school in New York City for over 20 years. She comes from a long line of pine tree ramblers, blood moon dancers and raucous storytellers, which explains a lot. Her work is published or forthcoming in Meniscus, Folly Journal, Gramercy Review, Moonstone Arts Center, Washington Square Review, The Listening Eye, Please See Me, Midsummer Dream House, Boudin, Artemis, Bar Bar, Broadkill Review, Madville Publishing, and others.
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Melanie DuBose is a writer living in Los Angeles. Her writing has been published in many journals including Kelp/the Wave, Exphrastic Review, and The Los Angeles Press. She recently completed her first novel People Who Love You.
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Gillian Leonard was born in Washington DC and raised in New Hampshire. She attended Hampshire College and Keene State College where she received a BA in English. She moved to New York to pursue her MLS at SUNY Albany and remained in the area working as a reference librarian. Her poems have been published in Cathexis Northwest, Poetry Online, Beyond Words, and most recently in Indolent Books’ “Second Coming” poem-a-day project. Her poem “Flight to Lithuania” received an honorable mention in the 2022 Invisible City Blurred Genre Contest.
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Shahrzad Taavoni is a writer and artist, as well as a licensed acupuncturist and creative writing graduate student at the University of Baltimore. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Psychology and dual Master’s degrees in Acupuncture and Herbology. Her poetry explores themes of mythic consciousness, healing, and ancestral resonance. Her poetry has appeared in Persian Heritage Magazine, and she has served as a reader for Honeycomb Literary Press. Shahrzad also integrates her poetry, voiceover, and light sculptures into immersive poetry light shows, presented at Maryland Art Place, School 33 Art Center, and Subtle Rebellion Gallery.
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