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.
At Borges’ Grave in Geneva
There will be a sea-battle tomorrow. Or
not. One way or the other,
that was the labyrinth
that engulfed you.
And those seven pagan figures striding left to
right disappearing
off the side of the headstone,
aren’t they brandishing
shipwrights’ tools?
They are necessarily there,
preparing for the sea-battle that
cannot but happen,
your forking path shuffling them along, never
reaching the other side.
A bit of infinity
forced back into the bottle,
buried in a cemetery,
a tiny park in Geneva.
Just as you wrote it.
Four Haiku
first light
tips the wings
of the scissor crane
*
desperate palm
curls its fronds
around railings
*
on the bend
two crows jump down,
one back up
*
bone-moon rises,
twigs knuckling back
a nasty grin
Autumn
Leaves turn to yellow, orange, red
But the desert heat blisters on.
My flower crown wilts brown
And I am so filled with self-loathing.
I wither in crowds. Gravity pulls me
And I drift with the leaves. I am a pile
That disintegrates upon human touch
Or at the slightest whisper of wind.
Some people find my leaves beautiful.
Others look at them with disdain, disgust.
Most take no notice. Can I blame them?
My yellow, orange, red leaves are displaced
Yet blend in with the rusted, red rock.
Hyper-Vigilance
Once upon a bootcamp, I was young, loud, fearless.
I’m still young, but I tiptoe down my hallway.
I take my camera to my rack at night to guard me.
Every morning, I look over the photos. Ensure I’m
Alone, alone, alone…
Safe.
I labeled my camera, “PARANOIA,” in black letters.
Black like the bullet holes, permanently isolated
from one another. I count them again,
Alone, alone, alone…
Safe?
Sometimes, I wish I could undo once upon a bootcamp and stomp
out the bullet holes. But they’re stuck. In that wall. In my mind.
So, tomorrow I will wake up, flip through the photos.
Alone, alone, alone…
Delete.
Winter Song
On a young
beech tree
thin as the base
of a music stand
bronze leaves
hang, notes
writing a sonata
across the snowy
parchment
of the field
James Roderick Burns’ short story collection, Beastly Transparencies, is due from Eyewear Publishing in 2022. He is the author of three collections of poetry – most recently The Worksongs of the Worms (haiku, 2018) – and a short fiction pamphlet, A Bunch of Fives. His work has appeared in a number of journals and magazines, including The Guardian, Modern Haiku, The North, and The Scotsman.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
C.A. Olsen is a writer, educator, and cat mom residing in Southern Utah. Her fiction has appeared in The Los Angeles Review. Find her on Twitter @bookishcolsen and on Instagram @c.olsen1701.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Raquel Battaglia is an American southerner living “across the pond” in the UK. She is a social psychology graduate student and researcher who uses creative writing to explore the qualitative nature of the human experience. Her poetry and flash fiction can be read in Fellowship & Fairydust, The Tower, and 50 More or Less.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Joanne Grumet has always been in love with language and earned her degrees in Linguistics, worked as a lexicographer, and taught writing. Her chapbook, The Garden of Eve was published in 2020 by Finishing Line Press and her poetry appears in journals and online. In addition, her songs can be heard at www.reverbnation.com/summerwind.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Kinder
“In the life of each of us, I said to myself, there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness…” – Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs
a poem is a kinder
(kind of)
version of life
remote and islanded
I landed where
time and memory
meet
like sky and sea
the horr/or
-izon
of death
my end-
less regret
or see
-cret happiness
Inside Out
Inside the transparent bubble of window matter
Ballooned to the limits of etherealism, they
simply could not fathom me
Unstuck inside my fold of new skin, they were
stuck fast to the trivial sill
not recognizing the window I am
A simply dull promontory, they
Wasted my sensitive space
While I, non erased, materialized to day
Did I want for them?
To see the cosmic shadow of everlasting light
growing inside out?
The Demiurge
The God sits at the center—
everywhere,
tired;
wishing it could make
itself die,
pleading
with its maker, wherever
it is (was?).
Like us,
before memory, the God
must have, in
its urge
to explore, stepped on a bug
crucial to
design,
upsetting the plan. Guilt comes
aware with
waking
to the world. The sentence too:
to pass down
sorrow
in its image, but mortal,
and therefore
mercied.
More Than an Appetizer [Part 4]
It’s all part of a tapestry woven from discipline
and pleasure. Wool must be clipped, carded
and spun, brightly dyed. Nothing without effort.
Olive groves tended, yoga poses mastered,
returning again and again to the point of choice
so when the feeling of effort finally drops away
and you find you want nothing more than
what you already have, you look at what’s
spread out around you and say “Yes, that is
what I chose. This is what I keep choosing.”
Mr. Fix It
My head rides waves. My toes tickle clouds. I’m filming another video for connoisseurs of off-kilter things. People so rich that they live for startling art and being thin. My chief patron, a pioneer in animal-shape vitamins colored with vegetable dyes. At her parties I favor zebras purpled by powdered eggplant skins—my affection for them, and her, are genuine, so don’t roll your eyes. Creators and collectors: a symbiosis like the algae and fungus teamwork that produces lichens. Everyone gives, everyone gets. Even waves benefit, even clouds. How pointless they were, energies wasted, before their film careers. Now all has meaning. Absurdity, eternity’s ur-feature, I have redeemed.
Patricia Aya Williams completed the San Diego Writers, Ink Poetry Certificate Program in May, 2021. Her poems have been published in San Diego Poetry Annual, City Works Literary Journal, and Writers Resist online journal. Her poem, “Abilene,” earned honorable mention in The Steve Kowit Poetry Prize 2020-2021. She is a digital image maker and lives in San Diego with her husband and French bulldog. Instagram @phantricia31
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Alan David Gould is a composer, writer and poet residing in Sarasota, FL. Gould is putting the finishing touches on a first anthology of collected poems, soon to be published. He is also writing a book of educational essays for musicians, a journal and dream journal, composing orchestra and chamber work for film and performance, and tackling the remix of 40 years’ worth of original singer-songwriter material.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Mark Henderson is an associate professor of English at Tuskegee University. He earned his Ph. D. at Auburn University with concentrations in American literature and psychoanalytic theory. He has poems published or forthcoming in Cozy Cat Press, From Whispers to Roars, Defenestrationism.net, Bombfire, Former People, Neologism, Broad River Review, Rune Bear, Flora Fiction, Flare, Visitant, and Blood Tree Literature. He was born and raised in Monroe, Louisiana, and currently resides in Auburn, Alabama.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Sylvia Byrne Pollack, a scientist turned poet, has been published in Floating Bridge Review, Crab Creek Review, and Clover, among others. A two-time Pushcart nominee, she won the 2013 Mason’s Road Literary Award, was a 2019 Jack Straw Writer and will be a 2021 Mineral School Resident. Her debut full-length collection Risking It is published by Red Mountain Press (2021). She can be reached at her website sylviabyrnepollack.com.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Richard Baldasty, writer and collagist, is widely published online, including recent work in Unbroken Journal, Hole in the Head Review, and Closed Eye Open’s issue on The Hero’s Journey. He lives in Spokane. Twitter @2kurtryder
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
You cannot copy content of this page