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.
Former Life
I was a country song fading
in and out on the car radio slid
the fiddlestrings to static when I hit
the big curve too fast, pummeled a solo
in the harmonica’s throat, parked
at Cossayuna Pond to breathe. I was
the beef out on the highway crammed
in a trailer, hooves eerie-steady.
Friends who honked and
waved said I was so deep in
elsewhere I never saw them but they
saw me and I was not looking so
good. Those days I was
smacking the dial trying to get
some other station to come in.
Rising from Koyasan Cemetery
Up in the mountain
Red cedars rise, giants
Into the sky
Each pointing to a star
Emerging at dusk
A small effigy lies fallen
I thought it was a stone, covered in moss
But I see a nose, an eye
A delicate face, shrouded in green
I stumble forward
Towards a row of metal Buddhas
Bamboo ladles at your feet
I sink one into black waters
And pour it over you, laced with words
To a departed soul
Now far above this cemetery of Koyasan
Giselle’s Fibers
Giselle walks by. I hope to walk down this street we both now live on when I am also in my 80’s. She looks fashionable, and I tell her. The plaid pashmina covers her small, strong frame. She rolls her eyes and makes an “ech” sound. I realize in no part of Giselle’s fibers is the need to be recognized or celebrated by youth. I hope to walk down this street we both live on when I am in my 80’s, and Giselle no longer lives on this street, and not care how anyone sees me as I do it.
Sign on the Door
Sign on the door
This way out
Photos of the cosmetic me
Shadow of my mother’s face
I’ll never go back to the way
Wild horses couldn’t
He was a big big man
A glacier leaves scars
I talk with friends
Swear words fly into tears
Dogs obey their master
A monkey struts its stuff
I fill the page with flurries
Fingers are my God
Madness is believing you know
I thought I had it so right
Hummingbird at the window
I shoo it away
Behaviors of Existence
Grey
clouds
gray
an attitude
of gloom?
Blooming, underneath
are passersby, observing
winding grey rock trails
a grayed blue lake aside
sharpened green vegetation.
Do you find art made in harmony…
boring?
Does your skin like one season cities
or a rotation?
Rush or quiet
(i ponder upon this grey setting;
how weather cycles like
emotional states of being)
Peace or war
When alone,
afraid for irrational reasons,
i go back to the basics:
food, water, shelter,
art, community, intentionality,
nature.
Gratitude seeps into emptiness.
Most humans live for drama,
many creatures live in drama.
If only goodness existed,
could you maintain it?
Nancy White’s work appears in journals such as FIELD, Ploughshares, and New Letters. Her three poetry collections are Sun, Moon, Salt (winner of the Washington Prize), Detour, and Ask Again Later. She teaches at SUNY Adirondack and serves as president of The Word Works in Washington, D.C.
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Patrick ten Brink lives in Belgium, writing non-fiction on the environment, fiction, and poetry. His micro-fiction story, “Ersatz,” was published by 101 Words and poem “Zen Garden, Kyoto” by Dreamers Creative Writing. He was also the editor of The Circle: A Brussels Anthology that brought together work from 34 authors (across 19 countries) from the Brussels Writers Circle. Patrick grew up in Germany, Australia, Japan, and England and studied in the UK (Physics and Philosophy joint honours degree), France (French literature and language), and Mexico (Mexican literature of the 20th century).
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Lauren Dennis is a mother of two, violently fighting against the confinement that may or may not come with that title. She writes because she has to, and has been published in Scarlet Leaf Review, The Flash Fiction Press, daCuhna, and Microfiction Monday Magazine. She has received formal critique and feedback from the Lighthouse Writer’s Workshop in Denver, Colorado, where she resides.
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Hari B. Khalsa’s poems have been published in numerous journals including the following: Nimrod, Western Humanities Review, Poet Lore, Zone 3, and The Dew Drop. She is the author of a chapbook, Life in Two Parts (Main Street Rag, 2010) and a book of poems, Talk of Snow (Walrus, 2015). Her award-winning chapbook, She Speaks to the Birds at Night While They Sleep was released summer, 2021.
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Winston TL is a gay American of Indonesian and Taiwanese heritage. He attended Seattle University & studied Interdisciplinary Arts, and he is currently an MFA in Creative Writing student in Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writing Workshop. His writing has been published by Variety Pack, Mixed Mag, NonBinary Review, decomp, EcoTheo Review, The Lit Pub, Papeachu Press, and elsewhere. His published work includes poetry, essays, & reviews, has been translated into Spanish, and has appeared in journals across three continents. He has participated in consortiums & workshops through DreamYard Project and Orion. Interests that complement his love for art include health, social sciences, and comparative theology & philosophy. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter @faboo_boba_teh, and learn more about him at about.me/winstontl.
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Still Life at Hefflinger Park
Toss the frisbee. Fetch over Earth digesting broken glass, plastic bags
styrofoam, decomposing chicken bones, and Chinese takeout tossed out.
Six years of rusting Campbell’s soup cans dumped in holes and covered with dirt.
Fast forward 46 years to rolling green grass and chain link fences.
Still life below burps—buckles the winding pavement. Uneasy ground shifts—
opens a new hole. A six year old and his golden are swallowed whole.
Dawn
I like to think back when I was young and still alive
of my mother and Sedona. How the red rocks
were dragon stones, women poking at devils
with fireworks. How my mother’s eyes were a soft reprieve
from the terrible awe, all and unknowing, awe from
haunting images of unsynchronized orbits,
awe full of full stops and railcars of ophthalmologists. When
she finally lost her sight, my mother, her eyes
faded to an umbral grey and I can’t
remember what color they ever were. Some flashing brilliance found somewhere
in the fireworks bellowed against the red rocks.
The Question
I don’t know her name or anything else about her other than the question she placed in my arms, her arms too tired to carry anymore the nucleus of doubt that must have sprouted when she was younger but had grown and ripened over her many unlived years into a gangrenous monster that needed to be fed an answer. By the time it came to me it was a seed again, so tiny I barely noticed it creeping in but it grew while I looked elsewhere first blossoming, then festering, then turning into the monster that needed to be fed an answer: Is my life’s worth 6000 rotis?
I write notes for the future me
who has forgotten our secret language.
One day, I’m afraid she’ll get tired of me talking.
So for now, I tell her everything.
I ate three kiwis today, and when I was stretching,
I had this moment where I wouldn’t have rather been
a flower blowing in the wind. My body was so comfortable.
I’ve been loving the way the streetlights
land on the walls in the middle of the night, and it’s even
better on days when I’m not afraid of the dark.
Seamless interrupted
everywhere
rivers
flow
to the seas
everywhere
oceans’
briny waters
merge into another name
hills and valleys
innocently are
till marked and branded
with fire and sword
the winds swirl above
and mingle and merge
butterflies and whales trek the globe
the arctic tern lives bipolar
and bangalore rains on paris
Shyla Shehan is an analytical Virgo who has spent the majority of her life in the Midwest. She holds an MFA in Writing from the University of Nebraska where she received an American Academy of Poets Prize in 2020. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Plainsongs, Gyroscope Review, Wild Roof Journal, and her chapbook, Unsuspecting Cinderella, will be released November 2021. Shyla is the co-founder and EIC of The Good Life Review and currently lives in Omaha, Nebraska with her husband, children, and four cats. All this and more at shylashehan.com.
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Jack Galati studied at Arizona State University, where his fiction was selected for the Undergraduate Student Showcase. His works have appeared in Marooned Magazine, Blacklist Journal, and Beaver Magazine.
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Born and raised in India, Vimla Sriram is a Seattle-based essayist. She writes about birds, women’s silences, home, and identity. Her writing appears or is forthcoming in 100 Word Story, Wanderlust, and io Literary Journal. She was a journalist at The Economic Times, MSNBC, and KBCS. She also edited the quarterly ISB Insight, a research publication of the Indian School of Business.
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Haylee Manda Reynolds is a kind of Buddhist kind of atheist meditating aerialist-writer who just happens to be in love with the restaurant industry. A published poet and author based out of Asheville, NC, her work can be found in HerWords literary magazine, Buddhist Poetry Review, and Dyke, Right? magazine.
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Michael Shen was born in China, but he has lived in the US for over 70 years. After work as a psychologist, carpenter, and, for over 30 years, a civil rights lawyer, he retired several years ago.
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