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.
Both the Path
I am not the end result.
I am a conduit
alwayshavebeen
I connect
one point
one chapter to another
one part-of-oneself to the other
I am instrumental in bringing things together
But I am never the final destination.
I am not what one ends up with.
I am
but
the wood
atop
the rock
atop
the river
you have
to cross over
in order to get it
When will I be the thing that someone wants to hold in their hands?
Who will walk
through the mulch
of my former selves
and plant wildflowers
along my grass
How can I make myself
both the waterfall
and the path?
No Way
Alex was seated, the movie started, when Ian appeared in the empty chair by his side.
“Hey. I’m a little short,” Ian said too loudly. Alex heard the girl behind him groan.
“How much do you need?” Alex asked.
Ian made some motions in the dark, then the theater was filled with the sound of tiny bells as an avalanche of change fell from his pockets.
“No way,” the girl behind them said.
Alex stopped Ian from trying to pick up the change and gave him a twenty. Ian retreated to pay for his ticket. Upon his return, Ian said too loudly, “What did I miss?”
“No way.”
Sacrament
Warmed by the sun
I sit at tabled altar
Blushed apricot, cerulean bowl
host and chalice
I cradle my citrine jewel
assay ripeness
Nectar beads shimmer
round halved flesh
Satiated, I offer a paean
to the numinous ones
In my palm, I hold the pit
hard as chastened steel
Pacific Ocean
It was the middle of the night and you wanted to go to the beach.
You had to go to the beach.
You wanted to swim in the Pacific Ocean.
And we leave tomorrow.
I was afraid you’d walk in and not walk out again, So I came.
The night sky was beautiful
And you were sad.
You can love someone without loving yourself.
(But I think it hurts.)
In the end we just stood there, a hundred feet away.
Looking at a place you’d never touched.
Candle
You know, that way of talking to yourself that can be dangerous. The way a blade is sharp or a pistol’s loaded. Since the last eviction, I don’t own any furniture. I don’t have an address. The newspaper said, Some members of the victims’ families fainted when they heard the jury’s findings. You’re innocent unless you’re proven guilty. Close your eyes. Listen. Everyone is their own music. The sun’s fading light, cold as a knife, the end of day, a smothered flame cowering in the candle’s slender throat.
Missing Any Thing
for K.I.
That blade of grass, that one, grew, but I missed it.
This tree, beyond embracing, grew wider, but I missed it.
You grew too, I was there, but I missed it.
Now something else is happening,
It seems the opposite of growing, for you.
For me, it’s palpable, it’s measurable,
it’s almost inconceivable, but it’s unavoidable;
vainly missing no thing, every thing, any thing.
Diana Arnold is a poet who uses form as function to distill moments of divinity in our lives. These poems encapsulate when clarity strikes and leave us asking ourselves what we will do with it. Diana’s work can be seen at Dixon Place Main Stage, Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Parkside Lounge, and The Triad Theatre in New York City. Previously, her poem “Seeds” was published by Mad Gleam Press in 2017, and her short story “Refrain” was published by Toby Press in 2010.
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Larry Lines is a writer (fiction, memoir, blogger), musician, and technologist living in Houston, TX. He attended Berklee College of Music in 1989. He blogs regularly at larrylines.com.
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Fay L. Loomis lives a particularly quiet life in the woods in upstate New York. A member of the Stone Ridge Library Writers, her poetry and prose have appeared in print and online publications, including Love Me, Love My Belly and Rat’s Ass Review.
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Lea Wülferth is a Brooklyn-based artist and writer, exploring themes of freedom, identity, memory, and truth(s) across different media. She was named Author of the Month by Spillwords Press in December 2017 and has published poems Chaleur Magazine, The Esthetic Apostle, Watershed Review and more. Her paintings and mixed media art have been exhibited at the A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn Museum, The Living Gallery and Pratt Institute, among other places. In 2017, she opened the YouTooCanWoo gallery in Brooklyn. She graduated with master’s degrees from the University of Oxford, England, and the Sorbonne in Paris, France. Website: www.leawulferth.com / Instagram: @l_peregrine
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Brad Rose was born and raised in Los Angeles and lives in Boston. He is the author of three collections of poetry and flash fiction, Pink X-Ray (Big Table Publishing, 2015), de/tonations (Nixes Mate Press, 2020), and Momentary Turbulence (Cervena Barva Press, 2020). His fourth collection, WordinEdgeWise, is forthcoming in 2021 from Cervena Barva Press. Five times nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and twice nominated for Best of the Net Anthology, his poetry and micro fiction have appeared in, The Los Angeles Times, The American Journal of Poetry, Clockhouse, Into the Void, Hunger Mountain, and other publications. His story, “Desert Motel,” appears in the anthology Best Microfiction, 2019. See his website for selected readings and a complete list of publications: www.bradrosepoetry.com.
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Ron Louie writes in Seattle; his poems have appeared in Antiphon, Cathexis NW, JAMA, Neurology, Medical Humanities, Pediatrics, Pangyrus, and CDC Emerging Infectious Diseases.
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The Thinking Song
She hasn’t had her teeth looked at
in fifty-six months.
She likes to count it in months
because anything measured in months
has to be small, be young.
It isn’t really a problem.
The subtle spasms and seismic dances
of her pale gums and chattering whites
aren’t much besides
a momentary distraction.
The infantile objections her molars made
when she wolfishly bit down
on that stubborn bit of bread
were quickly brushed aside by that
cost, cost thinking-song.
That worried prayer of not yet, not yet,
she’d come to know so well.
Paused
A paused rhythm of air stops at the top;
A Ferris wheel watches over the harbor
Watches me cling to my body’s anchor
Breathless catching a vision of the future
My future breathless between folds of I am
And the cursed knowledge that I am not
It is I am not which breaks the flow
Brings me to stop the process mid-air
I dangle mid-air, look between fingers
Try to avoid the place where rip tides wait
Avoid the place where churned dreams live
To pull me under, render me breathless
I am pulled under by a persistent wave
A paused rhythm of air stops at the top
What’s Unseen
matters most with trees, and I suppose with God
and godlike things.
Though trees can’t survive without roots,
they can manage sans leaves for a season;
mere adornments, changing colors,
like older women with their dyed, bright hair.
Kiss me, the old oak in my backyard says,
ruffle my leaves.
I am not so dependent on rain, as you;
my roots drink easily
what you must dig or drill through earth
and rock to glean. What is the
equivalent within you?
Though I go hither and yon
with my two legs and swinging arms,
it must be marvelous
to be rooted yet go everywhere
all at once.
Gardener
Because agoraphobia is greenhouse, jarred anther on a bone-meal shelf,
I fashion a shaman orchid, bring poppies to bullfights,
a matador ill-equipped because talk
therapy is cackle to lilac, potting soil in my vena cava,
daffodils building a ladder from the mound
of discarded faucets.
The aquifer trickles at sprinkler strength,
goldenrods I outthink—bird’s eye view of petal harnesses
had I fortitude. Milligrams synchronous, my crocus stays put.
Garden in the Evening
Through all day at work in the garden,
Again and again I paused until it settled – a still point –
mind’s cognition to invite a spark
quickening to listen,
what the garden may say
But all day I’ve heard the world,
serene fire surrounding my misbegotten wait
Holly Eva Allen is a writer currently living in California. She has a degree in linguistics and English from the University of California. Her work has been previously published in magazines and sites such as Levee Magazine, Blue Unicorn, The Courtship of Winds, and The Slanted House. She is currently working on a Master’s in English at Claremont Graduate University.
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Charlene Moskal is a Teaching Artist for the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project in Las Vegas, Nevada, under the auspices of the Las Vegas Poetry Promise Organization. She is published in numerous anthologies, magazines and online, including Connecticut River Review, Oyez Review, Legs of Tumbleweed, Wings of Lace: An Anthology of Literature by Nevada Women, and Sandstone & Silver: An anthology of Nevada Poets. Her second chapbook, One Bare Foot, is published by Zeitgeist Press. She is in her seventh decade, enjoys coffee ice cream hot fudge sundaes and laughter.
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Julia Wendell’s sixth poetry collection, The Art of Falling, will be published by FutureCycle Press in 2022. Her poems have appeared widely in magazines such as American Poetry Review, Missouri Review, Prairie Schooner, and Nimrod; and they are most recently upcoming in Storied, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Cimarron Review, The American Journal of Poetry, and Matter Monthly. She is Founding Editor of Galileo Press. She lives in Aiken, South Carolina, where she rides horses when she isn’t writing poems, and is a three-day event rider.
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Jonathan Riccio received his PhD from the University of Southern Mississippi’s Center for Writers. Recent work appears in Otoliths, Redactions, and The Night Heron Barks, among others. He serves as a contributing interviewer for the University of Arizona Poetry Center’s 1508 blog.
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Philip Kienholz is a retired architect currently practicing permaculture design and gardening. He has published a book, Display: Poems, available through Amazon, and two chapbooks. His poetry over the past two years has been published in the periodicals, Wild Roof Journal, Nine Cloud Journal, Lucky Jefferson, New World Writing, Gravitas, Train: a poetry journal, Free State Review, unpsychology magazine, The Write Launch, and Genre: Urban Arts.
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