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 in between our full issues.
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.
City
Prime is the light
that fades in the eyes of the moon
skin wrinkled and bruised underneath
as vibrant as the columbines
drying up the notebook.
A cigarette hangs, draining darkness
up and away, city waves under bridges
posters fluttering against doors that
would never answer
if a hand were to knock on them.
walk under the skies that
hang vines from their pupils
a deep, deep breath
deeper than the vastest oceans
dad’s t-shirt whipping on a stomach and
tickled by the sand of the air.
Geography
“My mind is a vast expanse of uncharted territory,” Jerry said as he looked both ways and engaged his turn signal. “My mind contains rocky beaches pounded by thundering waves. There are rolling plains that stretch farther than a man could drive in a week. Deep, fog-shrouded forests haunt the distant corners of my mind.”
“Couldn’t we just please use the GPS or ask directions?” Linda replied from the passenger seat.
“My mind is an unexplored continent!” Jerry called out as he turned onto an unpaved, rutted road, going the wrong way for the ninth time in the past hour.
Ever Blooms
In every bread line
there’s a masochist
a mother
a fledgling poet
and schemer
lapsing sonder
amid the nameless
grows madness
among eyes on the move
discontent
with
disconnect
ever blooms
in weary strangers
ruminations rot
who will be the one to snap?
the scowling one, I presume
though never assume
come undone
licks of laundry lint stick
shred by shred
in the filter’s mesh.
fingers scrape, wad up, throw away
anonymous masses of gray,
favorite sweaters
dissolving thread by thread
before her very eyes while
it pulls at her
like the child
tugging mama’s sleeve until,
bra strap showing,
she finishes
her overhead conversation.
the tiny ball of pain
inches further up her arm—
a universe compressed
tightly coiled
loaded spring of
tears, heartscreams she has
snuffed smothered shoved below
the mattress smashed
into the pillow suffocated
in hopes that she will
disappear—
will it be
again dismissed?
wadded up? thrown away?
or will it finally unfurl?
free to land? to detonate?
The Sky Blue Place
She could hardly bear
that sky blue place
between them
where he
was like the sun,
and she could
only see him
when shielded.
The day he turned
his back on her—
The black jacket
he was wearing
became dark matter,
and she
was caught
inside
a web of stars.
Shipwrecked Shadows
A white curtain billows
like a transparent sail
from an open window
as shipwrecked shadows
and secrets
swim across
the blue-grey
bedcover
to die
unidentified
inside a shroud
of mid-day
light.
Alayna Cooper was raised in Chicago, IL, now attending college in Durango, CO. She’s been writing since she was young, and has self-published five novels, all a blend of the fantasy/horror/thriller genres. Find more of her work at alaynaacooper.wixsite.com/mysite, or @cooper.writing on Instagram.
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John Sheirer lives in Western Massachusetts and is in his 30th year of teaching at Asnuntuck Community College in Northern Connecticut where he edits Freshwater Literary Journal (submission welcome). His work has appeared recently in Wilderness House Literary Review, Meat for Tea, Poppy Road Review, Synkroniciti, Otherwise Engaged, 10 By 10 Flash Fiction, The Journal of Radical Wonder, Scribes*MICRO*Fiction, and Goldenrod Review. His latest book is Stumbling Through Adulthood: Linked Stories. Find him at johnsheirer.com.
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Erika Seshadri lives on an animal rescue ranch in Florida with her family. When not caring for tame critters or feral children, she can be found writing.
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Katie E. Peckham writes and wonders in Los Angeles, in between building pillow forts with her kids and failing to keep up with the cilantro turning to slime in her fridge. She is a neurodivergent who has a deep and abiding love for underdogs. She has been published in Anti-Heroin Chic, Running With Water, and Quillkeepers.
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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. Her passion is her faith, photography, and the written word in all its forms.
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Untitled
I relish the heart-pour, the greediest giving there is:
a giving that says, “take me into you.”
The ghost of my girlhood wears a floating dress;
in autumn she is a chiffon blossom.
She savors the blood-itch, the urge to martyr.
My future shadow is a woman crawling through a marsh,
sticky with swamp life and untenable truth.
She doesn’t want, or love, or need.
Lament
For Ezra Pound
I took him from desire
forgetting for the moment
that within the skin
the heart still toils
The experience has
made me understand
all the mournful songs
of the troubadours
Who slept with farmhands
and desired royals
aurora
you smell honeyed
like strawberry sorbet on the seventeenth floor
laying delicately
like light pouring through the eyeglass of an icicle
twirling in accelerated orbit
pitching my brain into the universe
star-thick air, drinking in the moonlight
glazing my heart with liquid silver
our bodies are the shore and the tide
your lips stirring the waves
we dissolve in each other’s bones
like ice cream in the scorch of the afternoon
Painter’s Hands
I am walking with his friend through Princeton College
A dragonfly twitching and dying to the side of the foot path
Longer than my palm
Killed by a wasp no bigger than her thumb
The two of us stop to watch until it stills
When I tell him this later he will say
It’s something about you artists
But in the moment it felt
A solemn show of respect
The kindest thing we could do
Closing Night
Sour ale turned warm.
Two grotty mics, ready for drunk lovebirds.
Laughs shared around a craggy pool table.
Sticky floors with dazed dancers,
A familiar song, not to be heard again.
Cristy Shaner is an actress and writer based in New York City, and she is a recent graduate of Stella Adler’s Professional Conservatory. She has performed in theatre productions in Chicagoland and New York City. When she’s not writing or acting, Cristy spends most of her time obsessing over her cat, knitting, and watching horror movies.
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Rebekah E. Bartlett is a consulting editor, writer, photographer, and amateur astronomer. She lives near and works in Boston, MA and has a master’s degree from the University of Massachusetts.
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Ervin Brown is a fiction writer. His other works can be read in Art Block Zine, Willows Wept Review, twice in The Dillydoun Review, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, and Drunk Monkeys, among other places. He is a fiction MFA student at the University of New Hampshire.
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Devon Borkowski is a writer, painter, and actor from the New Jersey Pine Barrens, who recently graduated from Rutgers University with a BFA in visual arts. Previously Devon has published poetry with The Writers House Review, The Dillydoun Review, and Rockvale Review. Her short stories are upcoming in Room Magazine, and the anthology My Wedding Date: Tales from the Tables.
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Mary-Alice Taylor is a Nova Scotian with a deep interest in horror, plants, and cats.
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Festina Lente
I cannot ask you for faith in ancient
fables, to trust the proverbs of elders
afraid to lose their dying step too soon,
to believe as I often do that time
is on our side. I may talk of Tu’i
Malila who crept for two centuries,
offer the omega of feng shui tombs
in Fujian, but have no proof that my pace
wins every race. Patience delays the end
of pain and the slow decay of waiting
is the curse of living, taunting the mind
with its ticking, its audible tally
of loss, as I lumber along with good
intentions, my hard shell gathering moss.
Learning Italian
– for Dora Natella
In a café near the Pantheon, you listen to the way
a young woman at the next table
pronounces the word fa.
He makes. She makes. It makes.
He does. She does. It does.
Tanto, che fa?
Chissá cosa lui fa?
Fa. Soft attack, diminuendo subito.
The word just falls off a cliff.
It is beautiful.
She is beautiful.
the archive is holy
Rain
My wife’s father was a war veteran, died in her arms when she was 14. There’s a sad picture of him in funny clothes, taken before. She refused to let go of him when they came.
He worked at a mental hospital; taught Alzheimer patients to shave. It always broke his heart when they forgot.
After what he’d witnessed, how could he be like before? Did he wander around the jungle forever, the smell of mud never leaving? Did he drink to dull the sound of rain?
He lived through it, and died anyway.
No one knows what it’s like to be a prisoner of war.
Chiaroscuro
By the brush, the scene emerges
the painter is not intimidated by darkness
instead seeing contrast of necessity.
Creativity arises from the void
filling each form,
challenging the observer to pause,
wait and watch.
A singular impulse bleeds into the frame,
into and under the skin
reaching deep into the blood
informing each cell
speaking so quietly as to be imperceptible.
Here you are…
Here we are…
Recognizing reunion,
bursting through
in the form of a single tear
splashing onto canvas
mixing color and salt,
communion of the creative
on the foundation of the heart.
John Tessitore has been a newspaper reporter, a magazine writer, and a biographer. He has taught British and American history and literature at colleges around Boston and has directed national policy studies on education, civil justice, and cultural policy. Most recently, he has published poems in the American Journal of Poetry, Canary, The Wallace Stevens Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, Wild Roof Journal, Magpie Lit, The Closed Eye Open, Sunday Mornings at the River anthology, and forthcoming in Boats Against the Current and the Wee Sparrow anthology.
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Michael Lasater is Professor Emeritus of Mass Communications at Indiana University South Bend. A graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and the Juilliard School, he performed for more than a decade as a trombonist with ensembles ranging from the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus Band to the Metropolitan Opera and Bolshoi Opera, produced nationally distributed documentaries on poetry, literature, and music, and currently exhibits art video internationally. He has published poetry in The Coop: A Poetry Cooperative, The Closed Eye Open, Heartland!, Kansas Time + Place: An Anthology of Heartland Poetry (Little Balkans Press), Cathexis Northwest Press, and The Heartland Review, where he is the winner of the 2019 Joy Bale Boone Poetry Prize. Website: www.michaellasater.net.
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Lana C. Marilyn is an interdisciplinary literary artist and writer of Afro-Caribbean descent from Brooklyn, NY whose practice includes zinemaking, collage, audio, and performance. She is a grantee of the Brooklyn Arts Council and Citizens Committee for New York City on behalf of The Lit Exhibit, an independent curated literary program which she hosts annually. When not writing, she likes to cry in her spare time and overshare her feelings on Twitter (@cinniie) & Instagram (@cinnxessa).
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Josh Price loves coffee and cemeteries. He lives in Northern California with his wife and dogs. Scribble Magazine has published his short fiction, and he has forthcoming flash with The Los Angeles Review. HASH Journal, Burningword Literary Journal, F3LL Magazine, and others have published his flash and CNF. Visit him at josh-price.com and on Twitter / Instagram @timepinto.
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Susan Haifleigh departed from her thirty-year career in architectural design to explore writing poetry during the Covid lockdowns in 2020. Inspiration came in the form of membership in the writing consortium known as “Word Church” which meets on Sundays and is facilitated by author Laura Lentz. Susan is currently editing her first collection of poetry entitled The Sacred Arc. Her work travels the fault line between the physical and the miraculous, exploring what it is to be human and sacred at the same time.
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