Cover image: “Just give me 5 minutes” by Sofie Rosalien Deen
We’re pleased to announce The Closed Eye Open Issue III. This collection is devoted to the exploration of consciousness, and the pieces that are featured in it continue to impress us as we look over them again and again. Not only do these poems, stories, essays, and artworks connect with this publication’s main theme, but they do so with remarkable craft, nuance, and depth.
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 III. The full issue is available for online viewing with the link above.
In addition, you may send us a “tip jar” contribution to our PayPal account.
If you like what you see in the issue, you may also want to check out our ongoing “Maya’s Micros” feature. As the name suggests, it will be curated by contributing editor Maya Highland and will exclusively feature micro-poetry and micro-fiction pieces.
If you are a writer or artist and want to be considered for upcoming issues, see our Submittable page for the current submissions that are available.
Michelle Spiziri
Micki Blenkush
Lacunae
Not only a blank space or a missing part
but also a cavity or discontinuity
like sitting in the woman’s dim apartment
waiting for the interpreter to arrive.
Other creatures always seem to know
their place among things.
A crow’s urgent gathering of shine.
A snake’s coherence.
I don’t know if it was a step toward sanity
when I stopped, as a child, worrying
over poisons. A moth drinks
gravel puddle water stilling its paper wings.
Rung missing from its ladder;
wooden bridge, loose plank.
The year I was afraid to be alone,
dependence as a boat
rowed toward love.
Panther, ghost of the forest,
I want to say I found your way
to live. Slinking the misty edges,
hidden by leaves.
Someday I’ll fit inside an acorn’s room.
Not in dimension, but in letting.
Ladybug against a beige wall
making a case for God.
Mane Hovhannisyan
Tamra Plotnick
Elevation Dream
for Poonam
when the fifth graders
rush ahead of us
I learn that we only
need tiptoe
upon the spiral stairs
for they’ll pedal us up
like elevator bicycles
riding to the tippy peak
of the nun’s tower
that anachronistic
turret
both in Brooklyn and Venice
beach which
opens to a panoramic rooftop
tarred in gummy bears
that can be licked for
the odd
vitamin fortification
far above
the siren song of strolling babes
lanced into the sky’s flesh
vast and pure
we may humbly request
a cosmic
primer
or simply
sightsee
through kaleidoscopic
peepers
someone asks
how we’ll show
mastery:
Breathing?
Poetry?
we are so high
that we forget
to wonder
about the nuns
Karen Starrett
Syd Shaw
At the Crossroads
we call the moon down to caress us
shivering in the half-morning light seeking
signs and sigils in the dew-damp grass
faith is progressing in circles of salt and dirt
my fingernails are filthy we all are
in the peace of the rising morning
I speak spells clean the floor
write the words and cross my fingers
call the elements until I choke
upon the final one – belief
the magic words, belief and survival
primitive winds blow for blood,
I wrap myself within the circle
draw close to the fire to the center
of the three way crossroad
and feel protected
this is the elusive
faith
William Fillmore
