Maya's Micros
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 until our next full issue is ready for release.
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.
January 2021
Batch 011: 01.21.21
Olga Gonzalez Latapi
Lake Angela
Carbo Animalis
The bread of sadness:
it is the bread made
with ashes. I compose
a dance for ten gallons
of hair that hold ten
hundred heads’
different memories.
Outside, the train
shrieks in terror.
David Footle
Made Way
A log cabin in the city.
A small house.
A home
of some family that
once was,
once was,
once was,
whatever number was,
and no longer will be.
A green fence
to keep out those that
progressed beyond development.
A lone machine.
Resting
silent as the space around it. Shows
that space as though its missing parts
should not be there.
Dusk, and dark and
still. Trying to know
if what was there will
be there.
A tree felled twice.
A log cabin in the city.
Was.
Rose Menyon Heflin
A Trout’s Back
A trout’s back
Shimmers with
The colors of the rainbow,
A sharp scale
Drawing forth
A small rivulet of blood,
As you stand triumphant
Among the rippling waters,
Your back to the sun,
Wondering
If you should eat
Or let it live
Another day.
debora Ewing
burnt toast
olfactory hallucinations are the worst lies
brown bread on cast iron in lieu
of appliance
but my brain says ‘French toast’
I can hear the egg
anticipate syrup
I woke today peatish
sinus cavities dusky despite
never touching the bottle
dehydration aches me
I learn Chacarera to move on
footsteps of some other history
but it’s universal, this loss
in any rhythm
we never had a toaster
in that house on Cabot Street
I try to call up a smell
fresh buds nuked until crisp
my definition once
somewhat more complete
painting fish on the stairs
into the basement
I miss the way you saw
me
Devon Brock
Nascence
Nascence
heaved into being
stripped
like drumstick
like wing
Cartilage
not run not flown
Chewed to a speck
indentured to a thought
: I am :
placenta and rot
I am séance
and rattling chair
I am convulsion
red joy and worry
colon and throat
I am all
that passes through me
whether it be love
famish
or the rumor
that scratched my name
on an eggshell.
Contributor Information
Olga Gonzalez Latapi is a queer poet with an MFA in Writing from California College of the Arts. Although her writing journey started in journalism, she is now pursuing her true passion: exploring the world of poetry with a mighty pen in hand. She got her BS in Journalism at Northwestern University. Her work has been published in Teen Voices Magazine, Sonder Midwest Literary Arts Magazine, BARNHOUSE Literary Journal, Wild Roof Journal, Impossible Task, Genre: Urban Arts, Biscuitroot Drive, iaam.com, and The Nasiona Magazine, among others. Originally from Mexico City, she currently lives in Toronto.
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Lake Angela is a poet, translator, and dancer-choreographer from Lake Erie who develops her work at the confluence of verbal language and movement. She holds a PhD from The University of Texas at Dallas for her inter-semiotic translations of German Expressionist poetry into dance and has her MFA in poetry. She is a medieval mystic and beguine. Her poems and choreography often explore the possibilities in and kinds of darknesses and silences and the expressions of colors, waters, and suffering. Her first full-length book of poetry, Organblooms, was published by FutureCycle Press in January 2020, and her second collection, Words for the Dead, is forthcoming in January of 2021. Her poetry-dance may be found on her website: www.lakeangeladance.com.
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David Footle is a trained arachnologist with degrees in biology and arachnology, currently working as an interpreter and educator of invertebrate zoology at a specialized zoo. While exploring the biological world, he can’t help but enjoy a rather large penchant for poetry, indulged through reading and writing. His current favorites poets are Monica Prince, Elvira Basevich, and Natalie Sharp, though he is never too far away from some classic favorites like Edgar Allen Poe, Lord Byron, and Carl Sandburg.
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Rose Menyon Heflin was born and raised in southern Kentucky and now lives in Wisconsin. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Argot Magazine, The Aurorean, Bramble, Haiku Journal, Haikuniverse, One Sentence Poems, Plum Tree Tavern, Red Alder Review, Three Line Poetry, Visual Verse, The Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets’ Calendar, and The Writers Club.
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debora Ewing writes and paints in Annandale, Virginia. Her work interprets her truth, bends perspective, tries to reconcile reality with what should be. She’ll tell you everything she creates is a true story. Find more of deb’s art & words in Sonder Midwest, Beyond Words, Plainsongs Poetry Magazine, Shot Glass Journal, Dodging the Rain, and Jerry Jazz Musician.
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Devon Brock is a writer, cook, optimistic pessimist and urban expat. His work has appeared in La Piccioletta Barca, Poetic Medicine in the Time of Pandemic (anthology), and Oracle Bone. The full body of his poetry can be read at www.sweetandbittergreens.com.
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January 2021
Batch 010: 01.06.21
D. Iasevoli
Geography Lesson
Review the maps again: I’ve been there,
you exclaim, a black dot the size
of a pinhole or a grain of crushed pepper.
Expand upon it, we implore. There’s a river,
you start. Yes? I’m at the water’s edge,
a bridge, you explain,
with a sign that marks the spot between
Vermont and New Hampshire. Oh?
maybe Vermont and Massachusetts.
We’re quiet. The picture has turned flat,
gray, the usual rocks and whitened trunks
of once—
giant trees lost in a distant storm.
I passed a shack that had to be
a meth lab, you say, on the New Hampshire
side. We perk up; this could be good.
Hallie Fogarty
Noises of a Storm
You step out and it
swallows you up
swallows you
swallows you up.
Everything in your brain is a rattle,
every noise tap tap tap tap tap
tap tap
tap tap.
Open me up, I’d pour I’d pour
I’d just pour. Break my hands
but instead they tremble.
Thank you.
Sorry,
what?
Oh, hello.
Judy Taylor
Glimmerings Through the Veil
Sometimes I know
what I cannot know,
and someone else’s tears
beg release from my throat.
Neon blues fairy dance
before my eyes,
while trickster shadows
cackle around corners.
Elysian pulses
flood my heart,
gushing muddy pearls
from these dry lips.
And I want to
drink magic,
flower champagne,
fool the universe,
be the wild smoke
and fly the breeze,
like a leaf pirouetting
between heaven and dirt.
Cheryl Comeau-Kirschner
On the Avenue
His chair was caught on the rope tied to the lopsided pole again. Grabbing a bite on the avenue had become a slog since the pandemic started. Nowadays, his favorite places felt like gloomy circuses with disheveled, patchwork tarps and no joy. Nobody wanted to put out their good furniture anymore either. Just mismatched tables and chairs. Or even worse, folding tables about to collapse onto themselves. The waiter put his warm coffee on the table and deftly pulled the rope to the side. They both smiled as he took his first sip. It would be alright.
Jen Schneider
Reflection Queries
Q1. Define watch.
Q2. Define mirror.
Q3. How are mirrors and watches similar? Different?
Q4. Which of the following describe a mirror’s purpose?
Control
Restraint
Acknowledgement
Recognition
Other
Q5. Which word does not belong?
Mirror
Reflection
Image
Surveillance
Q6. What word would you add to this collection? Why?
Control
Watch
Track
Age
Q7. Define Age.
Q8. Does the aging process impact identity if one can no longer see their image?
Q9. Is dust on mirrors dangerous? Why?
Q10. If I hold my hand to a mirror and do not recognize, what/who has changed?
The mirror
My hand
Myself
None of the above
All of the above
Contributor Information
D. Iasevoli has taught for 40 years. He received his doctorate in Teaching Poetry from Columbia University, and specialized in the works of Donne, Stevens, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Jorie Graham. In 2000, he was New York City’s “Poetry Teacher of the Year.” He has lived in New York City, Western Massachusetts, Germany, and California’s Bay Area, and has visited all 50 States. Much of his writing concerns the specificities of place. He now lives in the Adirondack Mountains of New York State, where he serves as a volunteer firefighter and chairs his town’s Board of Ethics. Iasevoli has published both essays and poetry, in such titles as Chiron, American Aesthetic, Albatross, Blue Collar Review, English Journal, The Blue Line Review, Knot, Words Apart, and You Are Here. His chapbook, The Less Said, was featured at the Bowery Poetry Café.
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Hallie Fogarty is a lesbian poet, writer, and visual artist currently creating and studying in Northern Kentucky. When not creating, she can be found reading or spending time with her three dogs. Her work is forthcoming in Vox Viola Literary Magazine and she can be found on Twitter @halfogarty
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Judy Taylor is a nonfiction author and poet. She has published two books, Dharma Cats and Living Lightly with Lyme. Some of her essays and poems have appeared in recent print and online publications. Judy enjoys life in the San Francisco Bay Area writing, making art, and playing with her cat.
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Cheryl Comeau-Kirschner is a lifelong New Yorker and educator who finds writing inspiration from almost every subway ride, bodega breakfast run, and skyline sunset. Twitter @ComeauKir
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Jen Schneider is an educator, attorney, and writer. She lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Philadelphia. Recent work appears in The Popular Culture Studies Journal, Toho Journal, The New Verse News, Zingara Poetry Review, Streetlight Magazine, Chaleur Magazine, LSE Review of Books, and other literary and scholarly journals.
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