As a supplement to our main issues 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,” 1-2 times per month.
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.
Myself in Shadow Slats
How we insert ourselves
into spaces
within spaces
and never know it
unless a slim second’s
reflection alights
in spite of us.
sedimental heart—
rainwater runs off with poise
downhill from here
Overgrown
Because the forest had so quickly overtaken the town, it was difficult for the residents to get anything done.
Some resigned themselves to being busy indoors, others gladly seized the chance to relieve themselves of labor and indulge in an extended nap. Some of the children sneaked out through the windows and played among the foliage.
And some merely watched the plants grow, happy to see something green again.
Summer makes tougher
the proper care and feeding
of new solitude
Pandora’s Box
Because Pandora
was curious,
damn her,
I spent
fifteen years
on the couch
at two hundred dollars
a pop
to conclude
some boxes
best
remain
closed.
Jackie McClure writes poetry and fiction aiming to illuminate commonplace segments of our shared landscapes. Her poetry can be found in a variety of literary journals and anthologies, including Humana Obscura, Penumbra, Wild Roof Journal, The Nature of Our Times, Split Rock Review, and on Substack at Pouring Word Tea. She lives in the Cascadia bioregion in the northwest corner of Washington State.
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Kathleen T. Leuschen is a certified trauma-informed, resilience-focused 500-RYT currently working predominantly with seniors at Presbyterian Homes and Services. She is a 2025 Red Wing for the Arts Collaborating Poet, and her academic work on history and social justice has been published in Rhetoric Review and Ethics and Feminist Representation. Her yoga practice, centering somatic healing and embodiment, is key to allowing her to access her creativity. She believes the way out is in, and that being rooted fully in mind-body practices and experiences allow one to fully drop into their creative current.
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Robert Christopher Weissenberg is a writer and artist who resides in Central Texas. You can find him online as @mystigraphika.
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F.S. Blake is a Bronze Star decorated U.S. Army Veteran and Pushcart Prize nominated poet. He is a published photographer, traveler, advanced SCUBA diver, philanthropist, entrepreneur, and proud husband and father. He has poems published or forthcoming in The Military Review, Welter at University of Baltimore, San Pedro River Review, The Main Street Rag, and others. His chapbooks, Terminal Leave, Above the Gold Fields, and The Few Drops Known are available from Finishing Line Press. His full-length poetry collection, Forever or a Week, is forthcoming from Kelsay Books. His poetry career began during his sister’s wedding.
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Christine Andersen is a retired dyslexia specialist, a nominee for the 2026 Pushcart Prize, and the author of To Maggie Wherever You’ve Gone, a chapbook from Choeofpleirn Press, named a Distinguished Favorite for the NYC Big Book Award. The Same Moon, her first full-length collection, is forthcoming from Kelsay Press in the fall of 2026. She lives on a Connecticut farm with two bassets and three beagles.
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Donation
Three people wrestle
a furniture set to the ground.
She wears the gloves while
he hefts the mirror
with the small of his back,
and the young employee
makes dreamy attempts to lift
with his fingertips.
I can hear the glass breaking
before it happens.
Another man who spends all day
sorting cast-offs
catches my eye and I look away,
ashamed to see myself
from the other end of the telescope.
Snail
Approaching the throne the sequined path is sown with salt. The snail, but the snail so much wanted to see from whence it came.
Strange Placement
After William Carlos Williams
A heavily smudged baseball.
It could’ve flown over the roof
or bounced many times
before its journey ended
in the narrow alleyway
between the school building’s
separate wings.
The mystery wasn’t
how the baseball arrived
but why there & not elsewhere.
Flesh as Passport
Circulating my empire,
again and again,
will not grant you entry.
More than a gaze.
More than a hunger.
Show your flesh—
it might be the right,
the pass, with immunity
and other privileges.
Remember where your teeth
were yesterday.
Imagine where
you want them today.
Monologue
Though he kept on speaking, I had no idea what words came out of his mouth. His lips snapped, contracted. His tongue peeked, teeth flashed, biting down on sounds I could no longer hear. His whole face worked, his muscles tensing, his cheeks flexing, animated by a furious energy. The eyes also seemed to be talking, crinkling at the edges, shining with a feverish light. His monologue was so passionate, but my ears had had enough. So, I nodded, smiled politely and, making some kind of sound of my own, I went back to eat my dinner.
Carla Schick is a queer nonbinary activist, educator, and lover of jazz. Recently their poems have been in Quarter(ly), Querencia Press’ When We Were Seeds Anthology, Colossus Press’ Anthology, and online at Fissured Tongue/Inverted Syntax, Launch, beestung- and on Substack at Verse Daily. They received an honorable mention in 2025 for the Tom Howard Poetry Prize. They won a 2023 Literary Award in Poetry from SF Foundation/Nomadic. They have a Certificate in Poetry from Berkeley City College.
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Cami Rumble is a writer who graduated from California State University Stanislaus with an English degree. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Prudence Dispatch, Last Leaves, California Quarterly, Penumbra, and Adelaide Literary Magazine. Cami lives in California’s Central Valley with her family. You can find her at www.camirumble.com.
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Giles Goodland is a poet who gets lost in the dictionary and emerges at the end of his career offering his unreserved apologies to all concerned.
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Robert Windorf, Ed.D., originally from Brooklyn, is a Long Island educator and award-winning poet with recent honors received from the City of Tucson’s Festival of Books (semi-finalist: mini-poetry collection, 2024 & 2026) and the respective annual poetry contests hosted by the Village of Great Neck Plaza (NY) and the Babylon Village (NY) Arts Council. His poetry and flash fiction have appeared within many anthologies and literary journals.
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Oleg Olizev is a Siberian-born American poet and writer. His recent work has appeared in Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature, BULL: Men’s Fiction, OFIC Magazine, Cathexis Northwest Press, Stone of Madness Press, Night Picnic, The Ana, Audience Askew, The Argyle Literary Magazine, Pink Disco Magazine, Thorn & Bloom, Wicked Gay Ways, Beyond Queer Words, Untenured, and Neon Origami.
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Blake Lavia is a multimedia artist and community organizer. Their art practice dances between writing, video, photography, sculpture, animation, and mixed media illustration. Lavia is currently working on a speculative illustrated fiction series of eight novels titled “Panoptic Snow.” They also work with the ecocentric storytelling collective Talking Wings and the non-profit Talking Rivers (which they helped found) to honor the Rights and Voice of Nature.
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poem from here to you
have grown tired of the
failure of idea
have moved past frustration
rage
& fear
and into numb acceptance
would drive 3000 miles
to find sunlight
would kneel at the foot of
yr bed and kiss the
soles of yr feet
would kiss the insides of
yr thighs and wait
for some sign of salvation
could live with what i have
i suppose
but was taught from birth
to always want more
Cave dwell
Cull
Stalagmite in the dark
Hard cold bright
Sleeps soundlessly beside me
You lead me by the hand
To sit and eat
Seafood, sweet pearls
Shell cracks
Echo back
Down our throats
Down here with you
We should rest until it’s our turn
To leave ringing
Our eyes will never adjust
When we precipitate
Up
Apparition
Ice on oak leaves
I step aside
forced to glide
twig hieroglyphs
scrawl across my path
wishbone branches
ungranted wishes.
January sun slips behind
a cliff on Trillium trail
six deer in a line halt
their leader turns antlers toward me.
The Neighbors
have a large round
window on
their second floor.
When they turn on
the light at night,
it looks like another
moon. Earth’s moon
gets lonely. The window
moon flashes on
and off, a signal lamp
sending messages
to offer Earth’s moon
a hug.
The Monarch of Metamorphosis
I lie on my queen bed or do I lay with my queen? Does my bedroom monarch lay or lie on me? As a monarch butterfly perches on my kingly appointed shoulder, I scamper out of my mailbox kingdom to stand in Golden Gate Park’s golden sunshine. I ceased scampering so a new winged dynasty born from a chrysalis sheath on a cypress branch can oversee their kingdom without a dethroned wind shoving them off their throne. Will that cypress tree get chopped down to make another bed frame like mine? As I wing back to my bedroom, the monarch of metamorphosis swoops overhead.
Stuck
what do you do?
fungus gnat
oh, yeah, is that
plants
right, right
roots, actually
they any good?
you know, the kids love ’em, can’t get enough, me I just go around trying to hook up, maybe I liked roots once, but . . .
yeah you were a kid
I was I was, a larva,
ohhh yeah,
yeah, now I’m looking for a job
Ahhh, so where do you see yourself in five days?
John Sweet sends greetings from the rural wastelands of upstate NY. He is a firm believer in writing as catharsis, and in compassionate nihilism. His poetry collections include No One Starves in a Nation of Corpses (2020, Analog Submission Press) and Not Everything Is About You (2024, Apathy Press Poets).
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Emily Foster is a poet and editor living in Beverly, Massachusetts.
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Karen S. Henry co-founded the Boston Theater Group, producing works drawing on Kafka, Ovid, Shakespeare, and contemporary poetry. With composer W. Newell Hendricks, Henry received National Endowment for the Arts grants for opera librettos for The Cell and Ascona. Her essays have appeared in The Massachusetts Review and Fast Famous Women: 75 Essays of Flash Nonfiction. Her poems have appeared in Cathexis Northwest, Crosswinds, Nonbinary Review, Pine Row, and Stoneboat, among other journals, and in the anthologies Night Forest: Folk Poetry and Story and Of Our Own Accord. Her chapbook, All Will Fall Away, was published by Finishing Line Press.
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Kenneth Pobo is the author of thirty-three chapbooks and fifteen full-length collections. Recent books include Bend of Quiet (Blue Light Press), At The Window, Silence (Fernwood Press), and It Gets Dark So Soon Now (Broken Tribe Press). His work has appeared in Asheville Poetry Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Amsterdam Quarterly, Nimrod, Mudfish, Hawaii Review, and elsewhere.
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Keith Gaboury earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. The Pedestrian Press published Oakland, I’m Not Dead, Kelsay Books published The Cosmos is Alive, Falkenberg Press published Still Human, and American Poetry Systems published Monetized Happiness. Learn more at keithgaboury.com and keithgaboury.me.
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D. A. Kutuzov is a playwright, poet and trained visual artist exploring the intersection of micro-drama and experimental verse. His work focuses on finding the profound within the mundane—or the miniature. Mr. Kutuzov’s plays have been produced in various venues, including a Samuel French production in New York City. After an early publication history in the small press circuit—including Small Brushes (Adept Press)—he has returned to the page to experiment with blank space and absurdist dialogues. Note that the poem published above was first posted on All Poetry.
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Two Trails
A tourist
goes on a trip.
A pilgrim
embarks on a journey.
Snapshots and souvenirs
line one trail.
Tears and transformation
are treasures
along the other.
Mystery
is not simplicity.
The Feast
Seeds, black and slippery,
litter while plates, slushed
are pushed aside amid
the fury. Sweet wedges,
one after another dangle,
threatening to hit the sunlit
cedar, planked one after
another. One shows its back
to the rest, since your mouth
won’t set it free: the carnage
of pink flesh in my memories.
Red soaked steel cleaves
another head, divvying each
to each other, the subjects
who thirst for an unsatiating
blood, the sugared taste
that begs for more. Some pike
theirs on forks. Others pray low,
blessing their kill. While I survey
the fly-hovered meat—sticky, sick
and victorious in my bounty.
Seize the Possibility
So many possibilities. A sea of possibilities. Sunday in the Park with George and Patti Smith. Frame-0, Channel-1, meaning making Mark. I am a process. I have a process. I have a process. I am a process, a diamond. I am a process. I am hard. I am solid. I am identity. Crystalline self. I know what I’m doing. I am Oedipus. I am Frankenstein. I am the monster. I am the maker. I am creating my own reality. I have created my own reality. I give it to you. I give it to you. You is anyone. You is the void. Everything and nothing.
Inventory
The pharmacist asks if I’m taking anything else. I say no, which is true if we’re only counting pills.
I don’t mention the part where I’ve been wearing the same shirt for six days. Or how I’ve started buying groceries in units of one—one apple, one can of soup—because planning for Thursday feels like a broken promise.
She scans the barcode. The register beeps.
“Any questions about side effects?”
I want to ask if emotional weather counts. If there’s a diagnosis for feeling like furniture.
Instead: “No, I’m good.”
The bag crinkles. I tell it to hush.
Hiraeth
A spiritual longing
for a place,
which may or may not
have been
A nostalgia for an ancient
land,
to which we cannot return
Our soul’s grief and longing
live there, among the sea,
stone, and sighs
The wind tells us we long
for a fortress that is nowhere
and everywhere,
within the void
Elizabeth Farris holds an MA in Creative Writing from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Flash Frontier, Tamarind Literary Magazine, Barstow and Grand, Wild Roof Journal, Poetry X Hunger, Rue Scribe, Turbine 15, and elsewhere. She served as Associate Editor for Kallisto Gaia Press, 2021-2023. A dual US/NZ citizen, she makes her home in Fitchburg, Wisconsin. Website: authors.org.nz/author/elizabethfarris/
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Keith A. Dodson remembers when typewriters ruled the world and “cut and paste” involved blue-lined graph paper, X-acto knives, transparent triangles, and rubber cement. Recent poems have appeared in Beatnik Cowboy, Ink Nest, Jackdaw Review, Mocking Owl Roost, Molecule, Prudence Dispatch, The Argyle Lit Mag, and Wingless Dreamer.
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Vanessa Watters lives in the Northwest with her fur babes, Maesie and Mica. She loves the woods, the water, and the many wonderful people in her life.
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As the son of a sperm donor, conceived in the 1950s, Mark A. Michaels is an uncontrolled experiment. He has published in a variety of fields, from law to ornithology to self-help and has also written for theater and film. His roots are in 1970s New York punk and the Beat Generation. He has recently returned to those roots and to creative writing.
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J.M.C. Kane writes with surgical precision about loss, language, and the systems we build to make sense of collapse. His work trusts readers to feel what isn’t said, finding devastation in the space between observation and explanation. Kane is the author of Quiet Brilliance: What Employers Miss About Neurodivergent Talent and How to See It, a celebrated nonfiction work on cognitive patterning and inclusion in the workplace. His literary work has appeared in Beyond Words. He lives in New Orleans in a house filled with paintings, dogs, and stories that unfold slowly.
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Rachel McBride is the author of several travel guidebooks. Her poetry has been published in Cathexis Northwest Press, Writerly Magazine, and other notable publications. She received two writing awards from West Virginia University in 2014. Rachel received her MFA in Writing from Lindenwood University. The author spent six years as an airborne Russian linguist in the United States Army. She currently works as a freelance writer and translator.
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