Cover image: “Yearning” by Dakota Sebourn
Below, we have featured a small selection of work from Issue XIII. The full issue is available for online viewing with the link above.
In addition, you may offer a “tip jar” contribution to our PayPal account. All support is appreciated, as it helps keep this project spiraling out into the unknown.
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, including an entry for the cover and artist feature of our next issue.
E-mail us at theclosedeyeopen@gmail.com. Follow us on Instagram @theclosedeyeopen.
Michael Noonan
Megan Munger
The Pulling
When I waded through water with Dad
during our basement flood, looking
for a way to get water to drain, to stop pouring
through cracked concrete, I saw English ivy
growing in columns outside the ground window
glass. After Dad told me ivy could hurt
our house if it grew under old siding,
I wanted to prevent ivy damage, prevent
potential tragedy, protect our house.
In the final month I was twelve, I followed
my impulse to fix. I pulled
invasive strands off the most visible side
of my childhood home. My bare hands
reddened with friction burn, oil infection.
I broke hearts from each stem, tried to love
them for what they were. Each bare vine
was easier to uproot if I made it ugly.
I dismissed any thoughts about beauty.
This pulling was necessary for preservation.
This pulling was a way to answer the burden
I’d inherited, one way to eliminate
my shaken foundation as a self-clinging climber.
Rich Spang
Louhi Pohjola
Goblin’s Gold
For Robin Wall Kimmerer, bryologist and poet
Lying flat bellied, my coppiced
eye seeks out wee woodlands
of moss, the beetles and ants
that meander these fae carpets,
the moss undulating with each
breath exhaled through moist air.
In dwarfish caves carved
by aged glaciers into the lakeshore,
I spy threads of Goblin’s Gold moss
living on cloud linings of silver,
spinning sun’s straw into gold.
Its shoots, feather-shaped,
prop up fronds like gladiated
ferns: translucent, swaying forms
that make it the patient master
of gleaming mulched lake light.
Filaments of cells strung bead-
like contain angled, slant walls
that focus light inwards to a
giant chloroplast that shimmers in
the half-light of our imaginations.
With few requests of the world, this
weft of moss glitters back. We, though,
move too fast, we fly over lands, and
all stories escape us but our own.
Paula Praeger
Colleen S. Harris
Broken Stained Glass
The lamp tumbled, unabashed,
to cold tile. Between sputters
of light, shadows stained the walls.
The lamp was an antique,
found in a dim corner
when we strolled through
Louisville shops, untethered
by grief. I set it in the corner
to brighten our dim November,
but our floor was warped
with weeping, our silence
pounded against these paneled
walls. And here, at the end
of everything we were, I sit
across from your chair as you read
about other domestic disasters
in fictional houses, with fictional
resolutions and happy endings.
I remember the glow of that stained
glass lamp, the way it was more
beautiful with its colors strewn
and shattered across the floor,
and somewhere some author
will write us, here on our separate
couches on opposite sides
of some angry god’s face,
and this is it, the moment
the fictional me would reach out,
raise my voice to bask in your
light, but the flesh is weak.