Maya's Micros
As a supplement to our main issue of The Closed Eye Open, we would like to introduce 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” several 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.
August 2020
Batch 003: 8.27.20
Shay Wills
Messianic
Messianic
Bird songs
Soaring the sunbeams
As if what is above
Is always harmony.
Bowing
Ocean tides
Ascending the shore
As if what is immense
Is always inspiration.
Patient
Eroded rock
Standing for lifetimes
As if what is underfoot
Is always belonging.
Pen holding
Humans
Writing their spirit
As if what is within
Is always meaning.
Moira Walsh
Armada
We are the sailors
of the world’s smallest ships
Nußschalengroß we set
words afloat
Each tiny fleet
in formation
can shake
stone-faced fortress
cracking open
even the
hardest
heart
Note:
Nußschalengroß (German): as large as (half) a walnut shell
Sarah Gridley
Furcula
Then at the end of the meal where the bird’s
clavicles fuse at the front of her breast bone,
euphemism of euphemisms,
wish-bone.
Little fork,
small spring in the pectoral girdle.
What remains for you to get or be:
—can you speak to this kind of wishing?
Jason Emde
song dynasty governmental ministries
ministry of punishment
ministry of sparrows
ministry of armed struggle
ministry of wine
ministry of gratitude
ministry of suicide
ministry of contradictions among the people
ministry of temptation
ministry of torture
ministry of correct knowledge
ministry of longing
ministry of pearls in snow
ministry of basic identity
ministry of adolescent belligerence
ministry of edible nests
ministry of early morning befuddlement
ministry of ultimate reality
ministry of decay
ministry of unrememberable erotics
ministry of resistance
ministry of protracted nostalgia
ministry of middle-aged regret
ministry of autumn grief
Jerome Berglund
the lights are coming up outside now
birds are twittering
another fever dream
I awaken from
pipe fancies
long past time
I put to rest
but I’ve never been one
for quitting anything
Ludo Braca
Watchman
We are the swimming gods
You fear in liquid space
The kind you imagine
You look like
But don’t
Your parabolic frown
Gapes in awe
Apparent to us
As we open doorways
You can see
Going outside outer
Space beyond space
As you know it we float
Out and away to look up
Into waterless darkness
At things you can’t see
That don’t concern you
Since you are complete
A yellow sliver still
Living among fossils
Contributor Information
As an army brat, Shay Wills lived throughout the US and Europe. He graduated from the University of Arizona with a BA in Creative Writing and English. He lives in Tucson, Arizona, where he works for a wellness resort. Divorced with two teens, he spends his time hiking, doing yoga, drinking too much Starbucks, and, of course, writing.
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Moira Walsh has lived on three continents so far, working in eight different professions. She loves exploring layers of consciousness, tending her bee-friendly windowsill garden, reading Ken Mikolowski, and corresponding with friends around the world. Moira has poems and collaborations forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, Hummingbird: Magazine of the Short Poem, Black Fox Literary Magazine, and many other places. Find her visual diary on Instagram @poetbynecessity.
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Sarah Gridley has written four books of poetry: Weather Eye Open (University of California Press, 2005), Green is the Orator (University of California Press, 2010), Loom (Omnidawn Publishing, 2013), and Insofar (New Issues Press, 2020). Insofar was awarded the 2019 Green Rose Prize by Forrest Gander. Poems in this collection received the 2018 Cecil Hemley Award and the 2019 Writer Magazine/Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America.
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Jason Emde is a teacher, writer, amateur boxer, Prince enthusiast, and graduate student in the MFA Creative Writing program at the University of British Columbia. He’s also the author of My Hand’s Tired and My Heart Aches (Kalamalka Press, 2005) and the co-author of the parodic action novel The Crunch Gang Meet the Deadly Zombie Ninjas of Japan (Amazon e-book, 2018). His work has appeared in The Malahat Review, Anastamos, Prometheus Dreaming, Panoply, Soliloquies Anthology, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, and Who Lies Beautifully: The Kalamalka Anthology. Jason lives in Japan with his wife, Maho, and their sons, Joe and Sasha.
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A graduate of the University of Southern California’s Cinema-Television Production program, Jerome Berglund spent a picaresque decade in the entertainment industry before returning to the Midwest where he was born and raised. For the past several years he has lived a relatively quiet life, spending his time reflecting, exploring what he learned over the course of a somewhat checkered young adulthood, via writing, poetry and fine art photography. Berglund has published short stories in Paragon Press’s Veisalgia and the Watershed Review, a play in Iris Literary Journal, and poetry in Abstract Magazine, the Dewdrop, Wild Roof Journal, Lychee Rind, deLuge, GRIFFEL, and Ulalume Lighthouse. He recently interviewed the author of Bird Box for the literary journal he edits, which has published original writing and poetry from a poet laureate, a Green Party presidential nominee, and a world renowned citizen journalist.
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Ludo Braca’s work recently appeared in publications by Medusa’s Laugh Press, The Inquisitive Eater, and Cathexis Northwest Press. In his spare time, he takes great pleasure in the study of Classical numismatics. Ludo Braca currently lives in Austin, Texas. Visit ludobraca.com for more.
August 2020
Batch 002: 8.17.20
Ellery Pridgen
Garden Song
Convenient, isn’t it?
All of us
Are already in
Biodegradable bags.
We are compost,
Our death
Is good for the soil.
Dylan Chalwell
Big Cats
Nick is listening to Colin talk about the panther that lives in the National Park behind his old house. A pretty stupid story, says Maggie. Probably just a cat pretending to be a tiger.
Inside, someone is asking for some towels to borrow. Across from them, Marcello drags his foot across the face of the water. Anyone got a lighter? he says.
Maggie gets up and dives in. Brr, she says. And she says it again. She squeezes her hair out. You coming in, Nick? Before lunch? Yes, yes, in a moment. He is seeing the panther though, burning in the double-darkness – the night and his mind.
Lonnie Hodge
The Foreign Teacher
I want to be
witches’ knees and elbows
roots just high enough
above the ground
to stumble deep into a child’s
imagination forever.
I want to be a breeze
just strong enough
to move the leaves,
and not silence the birds.
I want to be the loneliness
in the center of an American pine seed
dropped from some kid’s pocket
and have everyone who finds me
wondering how it is I came to be there.
Maggie Gale
Fishful Thinking
I selfishly ruined the special spot in the woods behind our house where my brother and I used to play. It was an old dumping ground with all manner of things, some buried, some left in plain view. We imagined it was much more than it was when we found treasures like old medicine bottles and chicken bones. For hours we played pretend until it got dark and mom called us in for dinner with an air horn. Then, my imagination overtook me one day when I told my little brother that our place was where the underground fish lived. They only came up to bite, I said.
S.M. Silva
Portae
When I was young, an elderly parishioner interrupted his own last rites to whisper, “I spent a lifetime looking for lost keys to hidden doors, never noticing that none had keyholes on the other side.” I held his hand and assured him that all would be well. He passed peacefully that night.
Now I still struggle daily, seeking views from any in sight. The turtle says it means be careful what you wish for. The budgie says faith opens all doors; keys are beside the point. The owl says opening hidden doors reveals new vantage points, blinks and then reminds, who can step into the same river twice?
Jonathan Mundell
I’m Failing You, Here, Reading This
Yes, I see the sun as you do.
The sky is white-blue, and floods
the holes in the mangroves.
This is Florida, the same, a little different.
You know how you can hear morning traffic, that
it sounds like a child shaking the inside of a bush?
That was as it is now.
The way dust collects on the outside of a window,
or lizards, though
I see none today, on the inside of the screen.
I feel like that is as true as anything.
I know no-one is listening.
It is just me. Just as you,
surely, must know.
Poem of Us
laura is triangles of bottles and face, jutting up from the sheets
and craig, is voice and paper square and mocking the words of others
and I, is nothing, but pen and paper, a wind of nothing and nothing
along the breeze of ocean shore, the voices of sea, and earth, and time
and along the shore the gulls sing of the three of us
and our lives, the echoes like waves bending
along some beaten shell.
Contributor Information
Ellery Pridgen is an undergraduate student in the English department at Western Washington University. She mostly writes micro poetry and flash fiction, and you can read more of her work in The White Wall Review, Unstamatic Magazine, Prometheus Dreaming, Coffin Bell Journal, and The Ephimiliar Journal. She was also a finalist for the 2019 Prometheus Unbound Poetry Prize.
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Dylan Chalwell lived in the Blue Mountains when he was growing up, and there was a story of panther that lived in the National Park behind his house. The piece of fiction “Big Cats” draws from that.
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Lonnie Hodge is a disabled veteran and retired professor of creative writing. He has been awarded fellowships by the NEA, the Texas Commission on Arts and Humanities, the Millay Colony and others. He’s been widely published and anthologized, and his first book was the winner of the Sandstone Prize. He is currently working and a new collection of poems, a play, and a book during his travels across America with his furry bodhisattva.
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Maggie Gale is a mother of two girls. She enjoys creative writing in the peace, quiet and darkness of night. She has a bachelor’s degree in English Language and Literature. “Fishful Thinking” was inspired by a vivid imaginative experience she had when she was a kid.
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S.M. Silva is a lawyer, musician, and martial artist.
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Jonathan Mundell currently lives and teaches in Orlando. He graduated from FSU with a MFA in poetry.
August 2020
Batch 001: 8.6.20
Martin Altman
Another Self
Another self hovers in the twilight,
Until order has dissolved in
The acid of the under-world;
“Unspeaking” is the name of mother rock.
But the mouth speaks the imagined
Unsignified.
You haven’t got your legs,
But they haunt you,
Until you cross the threshold.
B.S.Roberts
The Bruising Light
Chained I sit
oblivious to all that happens
save the reverberations
that break through
those high impregnable bars
sounds without meaning
substance
emotion
attachment
and [for two wonderful hours]
white light
reminding me
of a life that I have known
and lost –
burning my retinas,
reminding me I’m alive.
John Langfeld
To Provoke Great Doubt
Master, when isn’t order important?
when it isn’t
Master, when is veracity important?
when it is
Master, when aren’t my questions important?
A moon reflected in the water [1]
[1] after a poem by Gizan Zenrai (1802-1878). See Yoel Hoffmann, ed., Japanese Death Poems. Tuttle Publishing, Tokyo, 1986.
I was born into this world
I leave it at my death
Into a thousand towns
My legs have carried me,
And countless homes –
What are all these?
A moon reflected in the water
a flower floating in the sky
HO!
Abigail Diaz
i could be self-driving
some
smooth jockey-driver makes me go
fast in my shining shoes. i am
driven, not
driving. i
squint and stutter, the epitome of
lost and losing.
imagine the world, i think. imagine the
bottoms of its cleats, the places it’s been. earth’s footprints are
wide and long, the great wide windows of
humanity’s house.
the steering wheel slips through my
hands again. this car’s
wild tires, kissing the streets, might as well be
my mouth.
Rose Mary Boehm
Perception
We may be travelers in liquid air, bottom dwellers
bound by laws of our own making. Rejecting lightness,
expecting pressure. Bound to the bottom of green sea floors,
we hunt between anemones, thick-stemmed algae,
watch fish darting through dazzling skies, mermaids
laughing at our lack of awareness. We can only guess
at what has been created. Celebrate the fire-red sea whip,
look for redemption in the depth of water lilies,
learn to walk from the water strider. Look up
to understand how the stingray darken the moon.
Steve Elder
Red Deer Evening
Too long since
my mind was on fire,
swollen with indiscrete languages —
a red deer glowing
beside an evening road.
Something sanguine and cervine
springing through the sunset —
quenched and unabridged.
Contributor Information
Image and metaphor have been Martin Altman’s main vehicles in exploring the self in its different manifestations, and in penetrating our everyday experience to our deeper realities. A stutterer from childhood, the major concerns of his poetry are speaking and hearing, breathing and cessation, connection and isolation. He was raised in The Bronx and worked 40 years in the Garment District. Living in Chicago he has worked for many years in the food service industry, and has been featured at The Café, TallGrass Writers Guild, Book Cellar, as well as Printers Row Lit Fest. Among others, he has been published in Outrider Press, Blue Minaret, Adelaide, Aethlon, Red Ochre and Light, a journal of poetry and photography. Also, he has read his poems at the Lemont Center for the Arts, Dank Haus German American Culture Center, and ARC Gallery.
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When not indulging himself by reading or writing poetry and prose, B.S.Roberts makes a living as a museum curator and an administrative assistant at the University of Maine at Augusta. He also tends to be working on his degree in ethnography and folklore. B.S.Roberts lives in Maine with his fiancée, daughter, silver pheasants, turtle, and four cats. Website: www.bsroberts.com
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John Langfeld is a Westchester, IL resident whose prose and poetry has been published in both print and online media. His essay entitled “reading it he changed almost into another man,” will be included in Far Villages: Welcome Essays for New and Beginner Poets—an anthology from Black Lawrence Press.
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Abigail Diaz is an author of poetry and fiction. She has been published in the Esthetic Apostle, the Blue Marble Review, and the San Antonio Public Library 2019 Young Pegasus Anthology, among other publications. She is currently an English major at Texas State University, with hopes of publishing poetry and fiction full-time.
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A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels and Tangents, a full-length poetry collection published in the UK in 2011, she is a three-time winner of the Goodreads monthly competition. Recent poetry collections include From the Ruhr to Somewhere Near Dresden 1939-1949: A Child’s Journey and Peru Blues or Lady Gaga Won’t Be Back. Her latest full-length poetry manuscript, The Rain Girl, will be published by Chaffinch Press in August/September of 2020
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Steve Elder is in charge of Tea Service at the University of Colorado Law Library.