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.
inside the words beneath the words
all that beauty all that dreaming
the arrival of something unspoken
wildflowers wild nights
life of my life
the stars regard us as they wink
the nerves web the body
even the spider and the moonlight between us
Burning Bush
There’s white gold woven
through the branches of that far bush
at the back of the yard,
a lonely spot behind the stump
of the ruined apple tree
and graves of cats and mice,
redeemed one winter by my son and his father.
Now it’s the last we light and last to go dim,
still beaming weeks past the season,
a looming, loving watcher left over
from when the world was new.
Now the deeper the dark
in these bedrooms, cold
where my husband is not,
the more brightly glows
the sentinel he posted
outside our son’s window.
Feathery tips flickering
when the wind blows,
like blinking.
Neo-Gates
I
The rocks around my ankles tonight
Will dream their hearts out through me.
II
Days when plants shiver.
Days when downcast clouds
Flatten feelings into two dimensions
And memory simply becomes an open faucet;
There is nothing to learn from running water.
III
My love
Eternal as a dying star.
Love’s been dying
For billions of years now.
The Sex Lives of Other People
I
There will be tears.
You expect more than playthings—
let other people do something:
shift, change…
it’s a process.
Recognize obvious pain,
harsh displeasure.
Help the process along:
smile wanly, speculate about gestures,
posture, tone of voice.
II
For pleasure,
guide your dream machine through instinct.
A certain amount of trial and error
will achieve desired results
that are mutually satisfactory.
Some rules and limits must be enforced.
You will probably remain a sensitive
night-owl, private,
open for negotiation.
A Nod To Derry’s Son
A nod to him whom attended Lady Derry’s autumn tempests, gyrating orange and red and yellow leaves, dancing alongside stone-walled pastures, caroling in voices divine.
Beneath a chimney smoking, her singing overheard, the man north of Boston, stirred.
With his pen he picked and plowed and tilled her mysteries, and, in return, a thousand rhythms’ ineffable conceived expression.
Her rolling hills and tree lined cathedrals, he interpreted.
In his toil, she delighted.
For he, the Poet, penned psalms performed by the winds and cries he earwigged from her cold, autumn skies.
To him whom attended Lady Derry’s autumn tempests, a nod is given.
Derry, New Hampshire was the longtime home of Robert Frost. This poem is in dedication to my favorite poetry book: North of Boston, and his poem October.
Terri Drake is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her poetry collection, At the Seams was published by Bear Star Press. She has a chapbook forthcoming, Regarding Us, from Finishing Line Press. Her poems have appeared in Crab Creek Review, Poets Reading the News, Quarry West, Perihelion, Heartwood Literary Magazine, and Open: Journal of Art and Letters, among others. She is a practicing psychoanalyst living in Santa Cruz, California.
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Norma DaCrema is a veteran high-school teacher of Religion and English at an independent girls’ school in Pennsylvania. A student in Arcadia’s low-residency MFA program in Creative Writing, she has published in The Lyric, Red Eft Review, The Night Heron Barks, and SkyWave Magazine. She lives in Rosemont with her son, four indoor cats, and Bad Randy out back.
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Zeryáb is a poet from New York City. He is a Literature M.A. graduate from NYU. His influences include Hart Crane, Mallarmé, and Paul Celan.
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Frances Klein is a poet and teacher writing at the intersection of disability and feminism. She was born and raised in Southeast Alaska, and she taught in Bolivia and California before settling in Indianapolis with her husband and son. She has been published in So it Goes: The Literary Journal of the Vonnegut Memorial Library and Tupelo Press, among others. Klein currently serves as assistant editor of Southern Humanities Review. Readers can find more of her work at kleinpoetryblog.wordpress.com.
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W. Alexander Dunford is a writer who lives in New Hampshire with his wife and two kids. He is a stay-at-home father, full-time student, and very involved in non-profit work. His first published work—Escape Second Death—has reached a global audience and is on bookshelves across fourteen nations. Writing is his life, but it isn’t everything he does. W. Alexander enjoys traveling, painting, and reading. Fun fact: he reads over sixty books per year. Website: www.w-alexander.com
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Milkweed
The seed pod interested me, as if
bursting and scattering was a good
thing. The farmer lines crops up, is
efficient. This is not me. I am no
monarch-fodder. I resisted artificial
insemination. The landing was less
fruitful than the dispersal. Windswept
loops, the aimless drafts of this flight.
≠
you’re holding back.
a boomerang isn’t a feeling, but it can be something you feel like.
why don’t we learn what complicates things?
it might be easier to know a mistake if we made one.
how lonely!
it is coming back.
<<
A Lion’s Roar
The guttural, rumbling sound
of one jet vibrates my car windshield,
and I feel like a trapped animal
in the face of a lion’s roar.
The Blue Angels are tearing
through the October sky.
As I near home,
two large blackbirds
hover silently above.
I imagine they escaped
from the painting
“Wheatfield With Crows.”
They saw Van Gogh
when his ginger hair
and beard had become
a shrunken mane,
but his brush
still feverishly captured
shadows and light
and caressed
wild wings in flight
while he stood in the heart
of a swaying crowd
of yellowish gold.
Have You Tried Yoga?
That tap, tap, tap, of your foot
Incessant, uncontrollable.
You gnaw at your cuticles, as if
That might offer some relief.
An oppressive cloud of smoke
Tethered to your form.
Makes it difficult to see things clearly,
For what they are.
That tremble in your voice again
As you choke (again).
Desperate for one clean deep inhale
It eludes you (again).
That damn paperweight still crushes
Your chest and you know that devil on your
shoulder? the one who whispers
sweet “what if’s” in your ear?
She’s worried too.
Northside Dusk
After Pasolini
I came back…this evening
Nothing much is happening
Which gives the chance to see – alone
I drive around the claustrophobic
Estates I was reared within
But it strikes me that there is more
Room here than there appears
In the news of popular having
As the evening blue descends
And the teen groups gather at the corners
And the tiny square gardens jut out
From the miniature frontispiece
I can sense that a nocturnal peace
May well descend once the scrambler
Bikes have finished their business
Scaring the old ladies and older men
And the last siren has gone out on the police van
Originally from Washington DC, Maura Way lives in North Carolina, by way of Boise, Idaho. Her work has previously appeared in Hotel Amerika, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Chattahoochee Review, and Poet Lore. Another Bungalow, her debut collection, was released by Press 53 in 2017. She has been a schoolteacher for over twenty years, most recently at New Garden Friends in Greensboro.
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SA Viau holds an MFA in Poetry from Louisiana State University. He teaches high school French and Spanish in Baltimore, MD, where he lives with his family.
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Patricia Cannon has been a Registered Nurse at UCSF since 2001. She has worked in cardiac critical care, neuro intensive care, hemeoncology, school nursing, and currently, in research. In the early days of the pandemic, she was redeployed to the CATCH team which stands for the Covid, Assessment, Treatment, Coordination Hub. This pilot was launched to help patients get much needed procedures and surgeries. Her passion is her faith, photography, and the written word in all its forms. Her poetry has appeared in several magazines and books.
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Kat Stubing was born into the sticky heat of summer and has been searching for the right words ever since. She studied at UMBC and went on to take sketch writing classes at Upright Citizens Brigade. Kat lives, works, and plays with her senior cat in New York City.
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Jones Irwin teaches Philosophy and Education in Dublin, Republic of Ireland. He has published poetry widely with small presses and journals and his poem “The Female Rimbaud” was nominated by Tofu Ink Press for a Pushcart Award in Autumn 2021.
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Null!
Now that it has fallen
we see the old tree
was hollowed, as I sit
emptying my pockets as my pockets
empty me, overflowing with moments
disordered and set in my ways.
And though it all adds up,
{the bounty of time factored by the void
I try to brush from my head},
though not at all
what I meant or expected, I’m left
holding my limbs against my trunk
and trying to stop stop stop
thinking, for with nil to rearrange,
the one permutation is to do nothing.
Contrition
It rained today, most of the day,
a good soaking,
and I have been exonerated.
My lack of caring enough,
my laziness, my excuses
have been taken care of.
Divine intervention.
I am bailed out,
guilt not ameliorated
but definitely put on hold.
It rained today perhaps in time
to revive them
take their dying off the table
offer a reprieve in the name
of gods and angels whose task it is
to replenish the earth
despite my sin of indolence
my deliberate ineptitude.
If I were Catholic A Good Act of Contrition
might be something I’d consider.
Native Son
In the burning pan,
Stacked neat as kindling,
Body parts and incisions
Give up their essence
To heat.
For days,
The house smells sweetly,
And I’m afraid but
Very proud.
They think she’s run off.
To celebrate
In Russian novels
They light the samovar.
They muddle through the mail
For the note.
Stopping
It’s terrifying
to stop – just stop –
hearing nothing
but your own breathing,
that raspy spark to a
psychic turbulence so
frightening to men old
yet grimly unfinished.
There’s risk in stopping:
a seed of surrender
may sprout and sap
the will to persist.
Terrifying and forbidden
is to offer your weary
surrender, to welcome
the peace.
Sea-Foam Show
The band plays on clam-shell,
blue with a blue mermaid,
all light sea with golden trumpets.
Knowing past your time,
really knowing and not taking the put,
is the step to the ballroom God,
where footprints don’t cause panic,
don’t cause mythmaking.
No myth is needed,
all time is now,
runneling down the curves of the shell,
confluence at ascension.
David A. Goodrum lives in Corvallis, Oregon. His poems are forthcoming or have been published in Spillway, New Plains Review, The Nebraska Review, The Louisville Review, Gryphon, Windfall, and other journals. Even before his early thirties, he was certain he would never write poetry again. He continues, it seems, to be wrong. About most things.
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Charlene Stegman Moskal is a Teaching Artist with The Alzheimer’s Poetry Project. Her work appears in Humana Obscura, Connecticut River Review, Sandstone & Silver: An Anthology of Nevada Poets, Milk and Cake Press, Nervous Ghost, TAB, and others. Her first chapbook is One Bare Foot (Zeitgeist Press) with a second chapbook, Leavings From My Table, forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in 2022.
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Mark Putzi received an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee in 1990. He has published fiction and poetry online and in print in the US and in many other countries. Most recently, his story “Halloween” appeared online in The Coil. He lives in Milwaukee and works as a retail pharmacist.
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Dr. Thomas Reed Willemain is a former academic who is swapping working with numbers for playing with words. Recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize, he has been published internationally in both flash fiction (including in The Closed Eye Open) and in poetry. A native of Western Massachusetts, Tom lives with his wife and son near the Mohawk River in upstate New York.
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Jeremiah Prenn lives in Boise, Idaho, and has been published in Wingless Dreamer and The Song Between Our Stars. His background in writing is simple: He’s been writing every single day for a long, long time. He’s interested in fiction and poetry that is precise and impactful.
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