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.
I Don’t Want to Change
Dead leaves in the drive
fists,
slowly closing.
On windy days, love
for you
hits me
like a flag against a wall.
In the first week of September,
I cut
back
old growth. I wipe the floors,
scrub
skin,
find a tooth-edged piece of glass
wedged
in a corner.
Tangerine
rolling
in your palm—
Sometimes
I feel
like your heartiness
against me
is all I really have.
Will you still love me in winter?
The Tower
7 hours
parked in
a window seat
to see nothing,
feel nothing,
only icy starlight
to occupy you
between flights.
No luck
on the change
& you ask
was he
a good kisser?
In dreams, in a
forest, cloaked
in torrential rain
relieved it’s
over, waiting
under a jilted
bridge & I’ve wilted,
coming home
to me
My Life as a Seashell
was mainly decorative; stiffly posed atop home-
styled bookshelves with cinderblock sides,
as if I had always been fragile, never
a fortress for sea insects; joyride to a home-
less hermit. Never roiled by waves, softened
by sand grinding sharp spines to dull nubs;
insides scraped thin as shimmering pearl—
a labyrinth of secrets from every shore.
Children told not to touch, whispered fears and wishes
into my rosy whorls, pressed to their ears
my fine, feathered lips. Told them of the deep; wild
words crashed from my glassy tunnels promising
sanctuary, someday, somewhere spacious to go.
Ask and Embla
nervous laughter
lips colorless as a collapsar
a want dense as a gravity well
he sees her see
surrendering the handheld
over to the night-stand
ads designed to razor past your eyes
to skin the sinews of what
you say you think
come close
enough to taste gramophonic dust
tornadoing up as the needle conducts
sound with no movement
rain pouring them like a lost tree
unpored in having been vegetative
all branches
all hands
I Have A Vast Respect For My Peers
What are we, some artists chasing after a fictitious world of our own creation. Ice pick eyes, saturated brutalism. Drinking coffee, smoking the French cigarettes you’ve never owned. Intellectual cosplay for those gasping, flailing for air face-down in a strip mall parking lot puddle, just after the rain came. The storm never seems to wash enough of us away.
Emma Kraner is an English teacher in Southern Connecticut. Her writing has been published in Long River Review and Big Red & Shiny.
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Lynn Thayer is a writer and photographer residing in Salida, CO. She holds a BA of Professional Photography in Commercial Advertising from Brooks Institute of Photography. She was accepted into Jane Hirshfield’s Advanced Poetry Workshop through Lighthouse Writers Workshop (2024).
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Elizabeth Rae Bullmer has been writing poetry since the age of seven. Bullmer’s poetry has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality and the Arts, Peninsula Poets, Her Words, Sky Island Journal, Rockvale Review, Anacapa Review, and The Awakenings Review. Her most recent chapbook, Skipping Stones on the River Styx, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. She is a licensed massage and sound therapist, facilitates writing/healing workshops and is the mother of two phenomenal humans, living with four fantastic felines in Kalamazoo, MI.
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Will Pewitt teaches Global Literatures at the University of North Florida and is currently on staff with The Adroit Journal. His work has appeared in The Oxford Anthology of Translation, Arab Lit Quarterly, The Columbia Journal, and North American Review. More of his work can be found at wpewitt.com.
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Nathaniel Mauro is a poet-in-theory and advocate for adding excessive amounts of fruit topping to ice cream sundaes. His Instagram is @lastdatepoetry. He hopes you’re not taking life too seriously.
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Grandmother Explains the Year of No
Mud grumbled and sucked
shoes off the horses’ feet.
Bread crust sprawled
like a feast. We spiced
soup with a pinch of rich
dirt, just a smidgen, a reminder,
that everything disappears, and worms
sprout seeding parents.
A Ghost and a Drinker Walk Into a Bar
Ghost’s been here every lunchtime this week.
I recognize him, I’m certain, but can’t quite pinpoint how with these hangovers chewing my thoughts.
I’m draining my second drink. No more, though: return to work drunk again and I’m finished. I need just enough to blunt my hangover’s teeth and quell my shakes. Bars are my cocoons, where I make myself whole.
But Ghost’s familiarity unsettles me. Silent, alone, joylessly drinking, staring at empty air.
I peer at his bloodless skin and lifeless eyes. Noticing, he lifts his glass towards me. And suddenly I know.
Ghost is me in twenty years.
I must change the future, I must. Somehow.
Joy
I am sure that joy exists
Somewhere
In this body.
Body:
Called home
Called temple
Called black.
I am sure that this body exists.
Joy is a bird outside my window.
Should I open the window?
Should I eat the bird?
How will joy feel, as it flits down my throat?
When I look to the sky, I am looking for God.
The birds are just passing through.
Somewhere, deep below
My toes clench at the grass,
The gravel.
I try to hold on.
From the Land of Standing-Up Stones
Merge with the twilight sinking
over silent mesa. Wind songs arise, soundtrack
to intimate recollections, binding me to place.
Snapshots blur and swirl, stutter into soft echoes,
unresolved. Walk free as Artemis, goddess of wilderness
and wildness, untethered. With grounded
metaphors describe this rough old place,
images spilling from your shade heart. Seize
the moving fire: White light entering
the prism bends toward the normal, separates
into all colors, all memories, all excuses.
All promise.
I want
I want to be that Peruvian-Australian actress I want a Range Rover A house
Maybe another life altogether
I want etc etc
John Cullen graduated from SUNY Geneseo and worked in the entertainment business booking rock bands, a clown troupe, and an R-rated magician. Recently, he has had work published in American Journal of Poetry, The MacGuffin, Harpur Palate, North Dakota Quarterly, Cleaver, Pembroke Magazine, and New York Quarterly. His chapbook, Town Crazy, is available from Slipstream Press. His most recent chapbook, The Observation of Basic Matter, will be published in 2024 by Bass Clef Books.
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Jaime Gill is a British-born writer living in Cambodia. His stories have been published by Litro, Fiction Attic, The Phare, Good Life Review, Exposition Review, The Berlin Literary Review, and more. His short story “Things To Talk To Jim About” won 2024’s Honeybee Literature Prize, while others have won or been finalists for awards including New Writers 2024, the Bridport Prize, the Bath Short Story Award, The Masters Review annual, and Flash405. He consults for non-profits across SouthEast Asia while working haphazardly on a novel, script, and many more stories. Website: www.jaimegill.com / X: @jaimegill / Instagram: @mrjaimegill
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Alayna Powell is a 3rd-year MFA student interested in poetry, short fiction, and archival studies. Her work is featured in Rogue Agent Journal, Poetry Foundation, and Tinderbox.
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Award-winning Tucson writer Susan Cummins Miller, a former field geologist, paleontologist and educator, is the author of seven novels, including the forthcoming My Bonney Lies Under, a nonfiction anthology of 34 women writers of the American frontier, and two recent poetry collections, Making Silent Stones Sing and Deciphering the Desert. Website: www.susancumminsmiller.com
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Tashi Wangmo is a poet from Bhutan. She holds a degree in writing from The University of South Florida.
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