Thank you for your interest in The Closed Eye Open. We welcome you to our first issue, which contains work from 40 excellent contributors. The writers and artists who appear in the issue really complement each other, and it was a great experience to collect these pieces and fit them together into a cohesive whole.
If you like what you see and would like to get e-mail updates, please e-mail us at theclosedeyeopen@gmail.com. Also, you may follow us on Instagram @theclosedeyeopen.
Below, we have featured a small selection of work from Issue I.
If you like what we do, please consider a “tip jar” contribution to our PayPal account or submitting your work to us via Submittable.
To submit your work for upcoming issues, see our Submittable page.
Melissa Cannon
Cabal
Against the dark, an oak leaf presses,
cuts out a shadow with its jagged hand.
Or does the night embrace and efface it,
whispering, “See, I am all you’ll become?”
If each question’s a hooked thumb,
where are the answers?
Escaping like wind
from a closed fist.
Are they in this together–
hand and glove?
Patricia Joynes
Raymond P. Hammond
The Coming Wave
“Each wave is made of the ocean but is its own
unique, individual, self. This is consciousness.”
—Father Maximus Gregorios
surge from a ship’s passing
in the distant dark night
disturbing dormant depths
of the harbor. roiling
under mirrored city
lights. surreptitiously
storming the darkened beach
until reaching shallow
sands, swelling to distort
the quiet reflections
floating above which boil
then break: rising, swelling
energy draws water
from before it until
it cannot contain its
explosive momentum
and releases, and breaks
and crashes down, and drowns
Kimberly Henry
Jeanne Foster
Iris
“Only this iris can I
leave you as testimony
of a faith that was much disputed,
of a hope that burned more slowly
than a hard log in the fireplace.
…a history endures in ashes alone…”
—Eugenio Montale
Following a night of brilliants,
Orion and the seven sisters, I awake
to frosty overcast and hurting vision.
It is true what you say: this iris
is the only testimony, and its witness
is doomed. The closing each night
is a signal.
That one oak leaf
alone—among the others
that have held on all winter
warming the hills with rusty color—
takes up batting the air like a beguiling wing.
And nothing else moves.
It is true what you say about memory.
Ashes…ashes…
And what’s that you say about faith?
A little book. A few words transcribed.
A hair. A single strand. At dawn
the opening eye
that burns with dust,
still opening.