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 painter
i pretend i am an artist
a painter of my life
i layer emotions like impasto
so no one can tell the difference
between my magnum opus or self ruin
one person’s masterpiece is another’s collapse.
Light
Leafy shadows etched
by candlelight
on the wall near the window.
Quarter moon high
in the late autumn darkness
shone through the half-open curtain.
You slept head on my shoulder
I lay very still,
pondering the effect
of moonlight of candlelight,
of the lightness
that love gives our lives.
An Eight-Sided Coin
To any story, even a tiny story
a tiny life, to grow one flower
you can grow a poem
more dews, dues, dos- than don’ts
Words that need to be exhumed
Un-estranged.
Here. You take my words for a while.
I am exhausted.
It’s never practical, this tiny story
No one noticed, this tiny life
with so many sides
laying flat, like an ordinary coin
waiting for someone to bend down
and pick it up.
Wool in Winter
If I could,
I would vine
you to me
like wool
in winter,
my skin
to yours—
a static hold.
Rada
Rada de Nada weighed nearly nothing yet from birth thrived. A pickle-sized person dressed cheerfully bright red. Slept eighteen hours daily. During the remaining six, orated. Mondays in Hebrew, Tuesdays Mandarin, thereafter Latin with pidgin exclamations. Philosophers acclaimed her the Great Nada without irony.
Her sweet tooth could never be sated. Her heraldry: chocolate ants surrounded by toffee.
A life so marvelous only Rada could top herself. She did at sixty, establishing benign superintendence over Central America, forbidding further Yankee chicanery. Pundits failed to explain how or why. Unexpected, unprecedented—political theory from Aristotle onward fell aside.
She herself simply said that wherever questions linger, there reality resides.
fiona rose is a poet from San Diego. She studied biological sciences and art history in university. In her free time, she enjoys reading literature from around the world and traveling. Last year, while solo traveling across seven countries, she got the feeling that she should be writing poetry.
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James Higgins is an irreverent Oregon poet who writes about many subjects. Having lived in several states, served in the army, and graduated with a University of Oregon BA in English Literature, he has written poetry all his life. He lives with his best wife ever in Eugene, Oregon.
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Cindy Patrick lives in reality on Vancouver Island. She’s not formally educated but is hyper-observational. She won first place in The Canadian League of Poets 2023 Lesley Strutt Annual Poetry Contest, and joyfully has had poems published in Blank Spaces, Subjectiv, High Shelf Press, and Griffel.
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Lissa Batista is a Brazilian-born poet living in Miami with her sweater-wearing sphinx cat. She believes one day she can win The Great British Bake Off, learn a new language, and buy a cottage with chickens to attempt off-gridding. She is also a habitual liar.
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Richard Baldasty, collagist and author, lives in Spokane in eastern Washington state. His 2024 publications include work in the Winter/January issues of Club Plum and Ranger Magazine. He was recently a visiting artist at Flathead Valley Community College, Kalispell, Montana.
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(Careful Planning)
first shadow
light gray
in the rainy morning
the desire for writing
to be the end of its
own activity
there are no properties which are absolute
which are essential
a pale blue
delivery truck
turning down the narrow street
in the world everything is as it is
Mechanics
In moments of nervousness
when every approaching minute
is an unknown consequence
I’m certain the beating of my heart
can be heard around the world
as muted thuds travel through me
nudging the earth off its orbit.
Tell me I’m being overdramatic
and that a single heartbeat
could never be absorbed by someone
on a different continent.
But think of me when the sound
of a faucet drip has wormed its way
into your mind and the actual leak
is nowhere to be found.
Shadow
At first, after the sunlight died, I couldn’t see, but over time my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, and I learned to appreciate the absence of light. I remembered how the sun had hurt my eyes. I remembered how scared I used to get when the midday sun shortened my shadow. I remembered I loved you only in the dark of night.
Staying Put
In days
of uproar
what’s the use
of traveling
to a nicer
place?
The sea could speak
soothingly
all night
and my mind wouldn’t rest.
In the garden
If the sun and moon made a child
She would wear your eyes as rings on her knuckles
Bending her spine into a circle
Never beginning and surely never ending
Across her body will grow a garden
Where the roots stick outward
The heads of wildflowers are hidden beneath flesh
Green thumbs massage her temples sweetly
That is where earthly pleasure will live
Oceans will rise between her legs
That water will be calm and obedient
Her rage would be human
Ungendered and breathing
If the sun and moon made a child
Samuel Gilpin is a poet living in Portland, OR, who holds a Ph.D. in English Lit. from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, which explains why he works as a door-to-door salesman. A Prism Review Poetry Contest winner, he has served as the Poetry Editor of Witness Magazine and Book Review Editor of Interim. A Cleveland State University First Book Award finalist, his work has appeared in various journals and magazines, most recently in The Bombay Gin, Omniverse, and Colorado Review.
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Frisk Normandy spends his days with his partner and dog in the mountains of Vancouver, British Columbia. His free time is dedicated to writing and creating music. His work has been published in Button Eye Review and Erbacce Press.
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John See is a researcher and writer who lives in Washington, D.C. His poetry, nonfiction, and fiction work has appeared or is forthcoming in Allium, The RavensPerch, On the Run, Poetry Salzburg Review, and In These Times. He has an MFA in creative writing from Western Michigan University.
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Chris Bullard is a retired judge who lives in Philadelphia, PA. In 2022, Main Street Rag published his poetry chapbook, Florida Man, and Moonstone Press published his poetry chapbook, The Rainclouds of y. His poetry has appeared recently in Jersey Devil, Stonecrop, Wrath-Bearing Tree, Waccamaw, and other publications. He was nominated this year for the Pushcart Prize.
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Allyssa Haygood-Taylor is an author and poet from South Carolina currently residing in Nashville, TN. She’s had poems published through the Asterism Literary Magazine, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, Moon Love Press, and more. She is also a 2022 Semi Finalist for the Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize and a Pushcart Prize nominee.
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Carpe Quaestionum
Three carp swim by,
synchronized
on a mission to
do I don’t know what.
It is a mystery,
where they are going,
where they came from.
Because no one
stocks a pleasure pond
with river carp.
Sparkling dots
on top of the water
are bits of golden pollen
from fifty kinds of trees.
Do the carp enjoy this?
Does the pollen,
eventually sinking,
make them sneeze?
Can fish sneeze?
Another mystery.
The pond is full
of the unanswerable,
questions rippling
this afternoon in spring.
Absence
Moon, you are
only a rock. Pale stone,
moon is only your
limited name.
Sometimes I call you
sister, friend, mother,
goddess.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe
onion, hubcap,
belly or breast or simply
circle
would suit you.
No-name moon,
my heart speaks your meaning
without need of translation
as if my bones were made of
moondust.
When you are hidden,
new moon in shadow,
I taste your darkness,
aching for your
full round body.
Tonight in your absence
with my feet upon this
cold rock of earth,
I spend my hours
wandering, wild.
But you,
whatever your meaning,
even in shadow,
you keep your face turned
to me.
Something Real
I want to be more than someone you scroll past/ I want face to face laughter and cracked pepper in your teeth/ cold fumbling hands making their way into my pockets and up my sleeves/ goosebumps rising like little suns across the sky we share/ you and I glowing there/ I want nerves/ I want wild and rare/ real in a world where real is fading/ I want staying that doesn’t feel like staying.
ellipses
you move
within serious intimate
ellipses …
…
circular gestures
i form … …
… through your sphenoid …
and temporal
…
breath, pauses be-
tween
… phrases
your breath
reaching a corner of …
tongue and teeth
…
sleeping mentionings of
inner … between -ness
…
things
[i need not know]
you are a divorcee
lonely
living with aged parents
reliant on dumpster food
complex health issues
and off your medication
now incontinent
and unemployable
while alongside me
as a passenger
on public transport
from which a seat change
is a humiliation.
K.L. Johnston is a photographer and poet who enjoys exploring liminal places and the moments that rise out of them. You can find her work in numerous literary journals, anthologies, and travel magazines. She holds a degree in Literature and Communications from the University of South Carolina and is a gleefully retired arts and antiques dealer. To find out more you can visit her Facebook page at “A Written World.”
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Whitney Schmidt is a teacher, writer, and amateur lepidopterist with a passion for poetry and pollinators. She founded the first student-led secondary school Writing Center in Oklahoma and co-sponsors her school’s LGBTQIA+ affinity group. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Harbinger, So to Speak, Wingless Dreamer, and Wild Roof Journal. She lives near Tulsa with her husband, two pit-mix pups, and various moth and butterfly guests.
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Hilary Broman is a poet, dance teacher, and business owner. She resides in the San Diego area where she frequently attends open mic nights. Hilary was published in the San Diego Poetry annual and the Poet’s Underground first anthology in 2023. She has also been a guest on the Written Scene Podcast and the Electric Picnic radio show. You can connect with Hilary and find more of her work on Instagram @hilarycharlene.
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Sadie Bates loves writing small poems. Her inspiration for such small pieces comes from how much can happen to a person in one moment of time. The environment expands an experience, no matter how quickly something begins or ends. Outside of writing, Sadie enjoys working with children, who constantly remind her of the poetry of being human. She also runs a creative collective for all who are passionate about words and storytelling, called Words and Phrases, in Seattle, WA. You can follow that collective on Instagram @wor.dsandphrases.
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Geoffrey Aitken writes in Adelaide, on unceded Kaurna land as an awarded poet whose industrial minimalism communicates his lived experience for publishers both locally [AUS] and internationally [UK, US, CAN, FR, and CN]. Recent publications include Sparks of Calliope, The Closed Eye Open, Oxygen, and unusual work. He was nominated for the annual Best of the Net anthology in 2022.
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