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.
The Blossom Road
A line of yellow blossoms stretches from garden gate to guest house door. The line, a living thing no wider than my palm, balks at crossing hard brick path, but on the other side, as if reborn, the pastel current circles around clumpy grass, stiff aloe, olive trunk and black mesquite. Scarlet ocotillo blossoms float on the golden stream—a mosh pit pouring into soft sand-cone. Ants, laboring at the crater throat, build high the walls with bits of leaf and petal. The workers never falter: How sure the line, this blossom road. How easily the path accommodates the twists of life, the contours of reality.
April: Sonoran Desert
Spring is a time of secrets: thrasher nests hidden
in cholla, twigs and precious cargo protected
by thorns. New beehives with tiny entrances
in garden walls. Elf owls peeking
from saguaro boles. Funnel webs stretched
at night across aloe beds, enticing
tunnels that lead to death. Holes appearing
in soil where hibernating reptiles and tarantulas burrow
out toward the sun, only to hide
in the shadows. Spring is a time
of mystery: How did the one-footed quail survive
the winter to peck seeds from my yard?
Presto
Maybe it was you
who was
the illusion,
but there’s nothing
I yearn for more
than to not see it.
The truest magic
is when the audience
is not the only party fooled,
and when we all want
to believe.
Qué será, será
I don’t believe in gods
but I believe in ghosts.
Though I know—
like the pulse that pumps
the blood through my veins
like the space
between atoms
like clouds wending across the open field
between memory and emotion—
neither gods nor ghosts need my belief to be.
When I was just a little girl
ghosts hung close
I asked my mother
in bed we roll over piles of ghosts
What will I be
Inside My Feelings there are Rocks & Animals
Inside my feelings
There is a rock with wings
An aberration of flying things
A living thing without
The assumptions of motion;
Without the beliefs necessary to make the mind move.
Inside my feelings there is a rock with wings
It does not flutter or spawn or sing
It lies there, without flesh, without water,
Without a sky to fly up to.
Indeterminate
In every formula, a flaw,
in every algorithm, a limit,
in every axiom, an absence
Tucson writer Susan Cummins Miller, a former field geologist, paleontologist, and educator is the author of two poetry collections—Making Silent Stones Sing and Deciphering the Desert— seven novels and an anthology of women writers of the American frontier. Her poems, short stories, and essays appear frequently in journals and anthologies, including the recent Trouble in Tucson and the forthcoming So West: Wrong Turn. Website: www.susancumminsmiller.com
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Kate Polak is an artist, writer, and teacher. Her work has recently appeared in Plainsongs, McSweeney’s, So to Speak, Barzakh, The Closed Eye Open, Inverted Syntax, and elsewhere. She lives in south Florida and aspires to a swamp hermitage.
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Maggie Frank-Hsu is a poet, essayist, and editor based in San Diego. Her poem “Fog,” was published in Pidgeonholes, and she has poems appearing in upcoming issues of Salmon Creek Review and Quarter(ly). Among other things her work wonders about the persistence of once-living things, and about the arrogance of assuming that the spirit world doesn’t exist—and the arrogance of assuming that it does.
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Zeryáb is a writer and visual artist from New York City. He is a Literature M.A. graduate from New York University, where he primarily focused on modern poetry. His poems are available on the The Closed Eye Open.
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Vincent Casaregola teaches American literature and film, creative writing, and rhetorical studies at Saint Louis University. He has published poetry in a number of journals, including 2River, The Bellevue Literary Review, Blood and Thunder, Dappled Things, The Examined Life, Lifelines, Natural Bridge, Please See Me, WLA, and Work. He has also published creative nonfiction in New Letters and The North American Review. He has recently completed a book-length manuscript of poetry dealing with issues of medicine, illness, and loss (Vital Signs) for which he is seeking a publisher.
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Cinnamon Roll
On my way to water
the tomatoes this morning
I brush against the screen
of the neighbor’s window
where he sits with
his tortoise-shell cat.
He’s scanning obituaries
for familiar names.
The cinnamon roll
warm on the table,
curls like a snail
cut from the can.
Passing I hear
the satisfied smack
of his lips
as he savors
the very last bit
of syrupy sauce,
licking it from his fingers.
Home
The tree whips
against the window’s ripped
screen, doorway to moths
who orbit
the blue light.
I wrap
my blankets tight, sip
the warm green
tea of night.
No Such Thing As Me Anymore
our past is as close to me
as you will allow
yourself to be
unspoken
beyond your hearing and useless
my coaxes
windblown unable to stand
a broken reed
maps a circle in sand
Voicemail from (redacted) 12:29 a.m.
“Nothing about you is appealing anymore.
You can leave and
I will be fine.”
I would be more scared of losing you
if I
hadn’t already.
Mother–Daughter Vase
Imagine: a matte grey-green, an autumn sage. Apply this glaze—thinly—to a ceramic vessel standing half a foot tall. Loop opposing handles on each side. Think rustic, think the creative energy of folk art. Cinch the clay at its base, then flare the sides to create a wide empty well. Make the spout a silent indentation at the lip. Over the entire surface, pattern it with repeating waves and flying V’s gouged deep into the exterior. Scars in reverse. Now, consider: a mother–daughter relationship, fired at high temperatures, hard to the touch, ever capable of shattering, yet enduring an aeon above ground and below.
Texts to My Husband: Work Trip
When you’re away,
When does your flight get in?
I teeter about, like an
earth rashly unbound from
its axis, unsure of how
Are you home yet?
to keep us all in orbit.
Please don’t leave again.
Texts to My Husband: Bath
Water flows from the bite-marked spout—tender,
inquisitive paws unkinking a tap and flooding the
stained polyester with a much-needed bath.
Ugh, the girl just spilled
my gallon water bottle
over her car seat.
Skaidrite Stelzer is a citizen of the world whose poetry has appeared in Glass, Struggle, The Baltimore Review, Storm Cellar, and many other journals. Her chapbook, Digging a Moose from the Snow, was recently published by Finishing Line Press. She enjoys watching cloud shapes.
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Mitch Rayes is a second generation Lebanese-Irish American from Detroit, based in Albuquerque. Website: www.mitchrayes.com
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Michelle Walsh is a poet and pharmacy technician studying creative writing and her pharmacy interest at the University of Iowa. Native to New Jersey, she has won awards for both her journalistic and poetic work from the NJ Press Association and the NJ Council for the Teachers of English. Her writing passions include mental health advocacy, ethical and social commentary, amongst a plethora of otherwise “off limit” topics.
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Linda Petrucelli’s essays have been nominated for a Pushcart and Best of the Net. Her story, “Figure Eight on the Waves,” won first place in the WOW! Women on Writing Fall 2018 Flash Fiction Contest. She’s lived and worked in Hawaii for the last twenty years. Website: lindapetrucelli.com
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Caiti Quatmann is an emerging poet and fiction writer. She graduated with an MA from the University of Missouri St. Louis, where studied writing, composition, and rhetoric, and taught undergraduate composition courses. Caiti works as a grade-school teacher and librarian in St. Louis, Missouri. She can be found on Instagram @caititalks.
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mending or me ending
vibrato, violence, very
loud ribcage, white bone,
jutting string, core of
apple bit in, skin.
pluck, violin, snip.
gum, wrists. volcanic bile.
weight loss, sickness.
lune: i
didn’t eat.
i rained out,
poured pounds of heart onto pavement
till empty.
i feared me.
Disconnection
Her greatest fear
is being cut off
from love
like an astronaut
hurled into space
without oxygen.
She suffocates inside
the gold-lined visor
of her helmet as
her multi-layered suit
becomes a shroud
surrounded by silence.
suck momentum
who were you
in kiss chase
opposite in restaurant
adjacent in concert performance
attractive in candle light
and bathing costume
for eye sight memory
and longing promises
of feet on the dash
until mortgaged suburban vows
said gone missing
who was i
Grace
I know grace.
She sits in a church basement,
smells like dirty clothes, burned coffee,
swears like a drunken sailor,
and laughs in a smoke ruined chortle.
Sometimes she’s a he with
mud crusted work boots,
a smattering of egg in his beard,
and cigarette stained fingers.
Then she’s a charge nurse wielding
her key to the med locker,
or a pilot betting he can recoup
his license and his life.
Often she’s edge-torn posters
mounted on scratched-sticky walls,
or sayings etched on wooden plaques.
and sprinkled donuts on a plastic plate.
Once in awhile, she’s a book
read haltingly aloud
by a desperate 21 year old
longing to be known, but
mostly she’s the tear stained laughter
of the lost who turned up found
by grace.
Over Fifty
We’re likened to flowers—
delphinium, crocus, forsythia,
names that color the raspy throat of time,
fill the air with familiar gray tones,
but consider the hydrangea
kindred to diminished hues of November
it shutters from wine to teal till petals
gleam like burnt sapphires, pearls, bronze.
Pansies, petunias, zinnias
in their crimson dresses
tear in October’s rush of wind
the hydrangea remains steadfast
bleached from wind and time its colors turn
from lavender to sea-shades,
turn from summer’s incense
to the perch of night with distant
sounds of bells and strength of chimes.
Nadia Farjami’s work has been recognized by The New York Times, Cathexis Northwest Press, High Shelf Press, The Esthetic Apostle, The National Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, Prometheus Dreaming, Polyphony LIT, Youth Poet Laureate, Body Without Organs Literary Journal, Marmalade Magazine, Cagibi Literary Journal, The Athena Review, and more.
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Patricia Cannon’s passion is her faith, photography, and the written word in all its forms.
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Geoffrey Aitken writes in Adelaide, on unceded Kaurna land as an awarded poet whose stylized industrial minimalism communicates his lived experience with publishers both locally (AUS) and internationally (UK, US, CA & FR). Most recently, his publications include Stepaway Magazine, The Closed Eye Open, Polestar Writers Journal, unusual work, Oxygen, and The Canberra Times. In 2022 he was nominated for the annual Best of the Net anthology. Find him on Twitter @GeoffreyAitken3, on Instagram @geoffreyrobertaitken, or https://poetryfeasting.com.
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Bev Fesharaki is an educator and poet. Her work has been featured in numerous journals and on the MoNA Website. She is a six-time grandma and lives with her husband by the water in Mukilteo, Washington.
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Every poem is a journey; every journey a poem. Laurie Kuntz has published two poetry collections (The Moon Over My Mother’s House, Finishing Line Press and Somewhere in the Telling, Mellen Press), and three chapbooks (Talking Me Off The Roof, Kelsay Books, Simple Gestures, Texas Review Press, and Women at the Onsen, Blue Light Press). Her poetry is inspired by living in Japan for 23 years. She has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes and one Best of the Net. Her chapbook, Simple Gestures, won the Texas Review Poetry Chapbook Contest and Women at the Onsen won the Blue Light Press Chapbook Contest. Happily retired, she lives in an endless summer state of mind. Visit her at lauriekuntz.myportfolio.com.
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Then
In the night sky
I traced an isosceles triangle
Equal, matching sides
Drifting overhead
In a flash, lightning rent
The sky, pulverizing yesterday,
Breaking it apart
In my mind, my heart
You were forever
In the winter
Of my clueless content
I stowed heat, comfort
But the sudden brace of cold
Forced my palms to clench
In the chill of your eyes
I saw a yield of char
From grate upon grate of ashes
The residue
Of our years
Converted to wispy cinders
Which in no way
Makes me Cinderella
The prince I thought breathed, lived in your eye found a warmer sky.
Pearls of Wisdom?
Thank you for asking, but I have no pearls to offer.
I’ve stubbornly insisted on whistling Dixie,
as I surrendered to day-to-day, hit or miss
existence, during which I often stumbled
over something or someone serendipitous.
Think of it as a trial-and-error type of lifestyle,
never intended to be recommended. I’d hesitate to
present snippets of idiosyncratic history
as pearls of wisdom. I suspect they would fail the gem test.
Fragment
A half-moon caught in the trees,
the desert emptied of birds,
my father’s voice—you don’t have to call me back—
and this thing I’ve imagined, tangling up
the burnt parts of two secrets.
Struck match smell.
The wind tunnel of a glass cave
bringing the heat.
I was missing and I’m still missing.
Parts Unknown
Tonight, the muttering wind
chases the gibbous moon
up a tree, entangling limbs—
that lunatic idiot fool.
Moon gathers its shredded bits,
and while you toss in bed
its hundred clattering feet
scale the backstairs of your head.
The moon paces your attic
while your feckless minds fill,
and what never happened
entwines with what never will.
The moon climbs the window sash
to gaze at the empty night sky.
You wait to hear the crash
after the reckless moon dives.
You turn on the pillow.
The moon’s shadowball of steel,
rolls in the back your skull,
clandestine roulette wheel.
Empty Nesters
In this cold, early night air of mid-November,
a full moon shines on two aging Maple trees,
and below, in the shadows of who they once were,
their now colorless lives lie piled like worn out gloves.
Their skinny, shivering fingers, now bare and exposed,
grip empty cups that carry some deeply woven wishes —
one a hassled hope that the fledglings have flown far;
another a hollow desire for that bulb of steady moon,
beaconing like a nightlight, to light their way back home.
Barbara Brewster Lewis, who sometimes describes herself as a recovering academic, is indulging her love of words and writing in several genres: poetry, playwriting, fiction. In June 2022, she participated, with eight other poets in an ekphrastic poetry retreat at MASS MoCA in North Adams. In July 2022, she was a writing fellow at Renaissance House on Martha’s Vineyard. Also in 2022, she participated in a Cave Canem poetry workshop led by Fred D’Aguiar and studied with Danielle LeGros Georges, former Poet Laureate of Boston, and with Patricia Spears Jones at New York’s 92nd Street Y. She began 2023 by enrolling in Madwomen in the Attic poetry and fiction workshops.
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Joan Penn lives in NYC and has a background in theater, photography, and public relations. She has studied with poets Scott Hightower and Jeanne Marie Beaumont, and currently participates in online poetry workshops with Jessica Greenbaum and Paris-based Grace Bialecki. Online and print credits include poems in Griffel, High Shelf Press, The Rose in the World, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Half and One, and in two anthologies published by Moonstone Arts Press. She was the 3rd place winner in the Wingless Dreamer 2022 contest for the anthology, Evening, Wine and Poetry, and one of her poems was included in an evening of theater, Superheroes and Other Men.
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Holly Sinclair lives in St. Louis with her partner and a pack of rescue pups. After earning an MFA in creative writing at Arizona State University, Holly taught high school and college kids before becoming a copywriter. Her work has been published in The Nervous Breakdown, Burnside Review, and MaximumMiddleAge.com.
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Holly Woodward is a writer and artist. She served as writer in residence at St. Albans, Washington National Cathedral, and was a fellow for four years at CUNY Graduate Center’s Writers’ Institute. Woodward enjoyed a year as a doctoral fellow at Moscow University. She also studied at Leningrad University and has an MFA from Columbia. Her poetry and fiction have won prizes from Story Magazine, the 92nd Street Y, and New Letters, among other honors.
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Jason Boitnott is a rural Nebraskan who writes concise observations about life in his immediate surroundings. He is a family man, 25-year educator (high school counselor), farmer, and poet.
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