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.
Ease
We have settled into this much later than most
After years of passionate thrills and angst-ridden competition.
Now there is a sigh, a long exhale, and comfort
Taking hands while walking with maybe no talking at all.
Witnessing the world around us, observing nature
Smiling a shared grin while people watching, as we are thinking the same.
Knowing each other’s rhythms so well that we are no longer colliding, clashing
Still delighted by decisions, impulses, and wanderings of the mind.
Gentle replaces rough, reassurance replaces the need to shock or thrill
The laughter continues, the humor we find in our impermanence still tickles.
Heat
I’m living for the moment.
A great cloud, neither god nor goddess
refuses to shed its tears
blown west, now east, by strange forces.
I feel the heat of betrayal.
The fires rage and cities crumble
so the soil can begin again.
The trees, mindless of us, will return.
The sun looks down and says nothing.
Small Bouquets
I.
Lady banks roses hang
over the front porch,
toss down their petals,
welcoming a bride
and a hero. Buds
of something fragile
and long forgotten
begin unfurling
as they step inside.
II.
My heart lifts.
Unknowing,
my parents
shared their gift:
unveiling
her face in
delight as
he handed
her flowers.
III.
When he brought the vegetables
in from the garden
his hardened hands also brought
gardenias for Mom,
daisy mums for me: bright gifts,
fresher nourishment.
insomnia
a sea cucumber washed up by the day takes the place where my legs used to be.
a bed is a hair pulling station beneath a sea-ling that is the surface of the ocean I want to walk on.
a single strand of crinkled hair is fishing line for my fingers.
a computer on sheets is phosphorescence in wet sand.
a blue ringed octopus has found a home in my empty skull.
a phone is a clock that enjoys drowning minutes in quiet storms.
a still palm tree on the balcony is a friend when I get up to smoke.
Himalayan Salt
I think about the days
I fell asleep with
A slow heartbeat.
Inhale, exhale—
Maybe this is
The night.
I feel a stabbing
Chest pain.
I remember
I learned about apples—
Fibrous, thick skin.
The doctor said
To put pink
Himalayan salt in
My lower lip:
I thought of
Chew.
I miss Jess,
The places our
Minds, bodies went.
But I drove alone
To buy the lacy
Vintage nightdress.
I wanted to be
Reclaimed, taken back.
That was forty dollars
Down the drain.
In Case
In case magnetic memory fades,
and even undying machines forget;
in case bar codes crack and peel,
shattering half syllables of data;
in case numbers are transposed
and no access is allowed,
there is still the photograph,
slightly dulled but clear enough,
behind the wallet’s plastic window,
that says one summer afternoon
wind touched your face, forcing
you to lift and turn your head,
tossing hair to either side,
and make that sly half-smile,
almost of annoyance,
in front of the old house,
in that aging town in Illinois,
reminding me, now, that we,
together, were once passing through.
Nicole Farmer is a writer and teacher living in Asheville, NC. Her poems have been published in The Sheepshead Review, The Bangalore Review, The Roadrunner Review, Wild Roof Journal, Bacopa Literary Review, The Great Smokies Review, Kakalak Review, and others. Her play 50 JOBS was produced in Los Angeles. Nicole has been awarded the First Prize in Prose Poetry from the Bacopa Literary Review, which will appear in Sept. 2021. In the 90’s she graduated from The Juilliard School of Drama.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
K. L. Johnston first published at the age of sixteen and has been writing ever since, mostly non-fiction and poetry. While wrangling seven children to adulthood, she stumbled into a career as a dealer in art and antiques. Other interests include horticulture, historic research, and photography. She has developed her micro poetry with the idea of each poem becoming a verbal snapshot of a moment or a concept.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Megan Anning is an Australian writer who is fascinated by Bohemianism and the romantic idea of the “starving artist.” Her stories and poetry often incorporate intertextuality as a central narrative device and have appeared in Text Journal, FIVE:2:ONE, October Hill Magazine, The Citron Review, and The West End Magazine. She has an MA in Creative Writing and is completing her first novel as part of her PhD at Griffith University, Queensland.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
KateLin Carsrud is a graduate student in the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi. Her work has appeared in Baltimore-based literary magazine JMMW and Equinox, where she was awarded the 2019 David Jauss Prize for Fiction.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Vincent Casaregola teaches American literature and film, creative writing, rhetorical studies, and composition at Saint Louis University. Recently, he has published poetry in a number of journals, including The Bellevue Literary Review, The Examined Life, Natural Bridge, WLA, Dappled Things, 2River, Work, Lifelines, and Blood and Thunder. Some time ago, he had published creative nonfiction in New Letters and The North American Review.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
No hell below us, above us only sky
I’m in an old house smell of wet paint
on the radio imagine there’s no heaven it’s
easy if you take a right at the end of the hall
he’s in there crown of thorns pulled off
his face a tracery of black scratches—
after rising up inside a shaft of light
and spending a couple millennia away
he’s back to say heaven is a needle
& thread—we’re all just lucky to be alive
There is no candor
like climate, the tepid
confession of rain,
its droplets heavy
on the window—no,
I didn’t try hard enough.
from The Word Within
life that you measure in missteps
towards a horizon
or the end of a sentence
without parentheses
in the schist stone flaking
in parallel and harmonic layers
where one can defeat
the arrogance
of salty skin on the tongue
of matter and its sediments.
and as it is real
the shelter of the hand
that leads you on new paths
towards the transparent of the elsewhere
so is the purple sign of laces
of an imposed impermanence
on the slender miracle of your wrist.
Getting There
Patterns lie in rhythms
We barely hear,
Thumping in our veins,
Resting just behind flickering
Eyelids, closed but not dreaming
Yet—
Yet it all comes close to together
As words pour into place
Giving us a fix that rights
Our vision, clears our mind,
And teaches us to see
Nothing in a new way.
Dream of a Spanish Town
after reading Cesar Vallejo
Together we are passing,
linked in a persistent dream:
displeased, pallid, without even
a crumb of pan dulce to sustain us.
Are there truly souls, almas muertas
sliding along these wet cobblestones?
Walk with care, my dearest one,
on the seawall’s fragile
edge, as you toss into dark waters
one by one, the purple flowers
I gave you on the day we rode
bicycles together in the rain.
Not Quite Elysian
When a truck brought heavy equipment into the meadow
to lay down a spectacular playground for our grandkids,
and then next day another vehicle arrived to haul away
dead trees plus fallen branches to minimize fire risks,
it didn’t occur to me that an unintended consequence
was crushing a maze of buried white plastic pipes
which resulted in nada children being allowed by
their parents to use slide or climbing apparatus
since they now lay smack dab middle stinking
lake’s effluent from septic tank drainfields.
Linda Malnack is the author of two poetry chapbooks, 21 Boxes (dancing girl press) and Bone Beads (Paper Boat Press). Her poetry appears in Prairie Schooner, The Seattle Review, Amherst Review, Southern Humanities Review, Blackbird, and elsewhere. Linda is an Assistant Poetry Editor for Crab Creek Review.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Beppe Cavatorta lives in Tucson and teaches at the University of Arizona. He holds an MA from the University of Virginia, and a PhD from UCLA. He has authored or edited several articles and volumes on poetics. His poetry, mostly in Italian, has been collected in 2 volumes published in 2020: La stanza sgombra [The Emptied Stanza Massa (Italy): Transeuropa] and Istantanee di un amor de lonh [Snapshots of a Love from Afar. Pordenone (Italy): Samuele Editore].
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Although Jonathan Latimer is originally a Southern California surfer, he now lives in Princeton, New Jersey and works in publishing as a publisher, editor, writer, and developer specializing in creating and organizing large bodies of information for students and adults in both print and electronic media. Projects he has developed include The American Heritage Dictionary Third Edition, Cultural Literacy, The Encyclopedia of the Environment, The Simon & Schuster Thesaurus for Children, Peterson Field Guides, and Golden Guides.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Michael Cooney lives in the Hudson Valley and has published poetry in Badlands, Second Chance Lit, Bitter Oleander, Big Picture Review, and other journals. He is currently working on a series of historical fiction novellas, one of which appears in the 2021 Running Wild Novella Anthology. @mjcooney1205
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Gerard Sarnat won San Francisco Poetry’s 2020 Contest, the Poetry in the Arts First Place Award plus the Dorfman Prize, and he has been nominated for handfuls of 2021 and previous Pushcarts plus Best of the Net Awards. Gerry is widely published including in Buddhist Poetry Review, Gargoyle, Main Street Rag, New Delta Review, Arkansas Review, Hamilton-Stone Review, Northampton Review, New Haven Poetry Institute, and Texas Review. He’s authored the collections Homeless Chronicles (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014), and Melting the Ice King (2016). Website: gerardsarnat.com
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
You cannot copy content of this page