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.
[they move through their mute rooms]
Behind the museum’s glass, each animal with
its own finger-painted backdrop. All this dirt, pretend. Some
dioramas so small they neatly fit into my purse.
The red squirrel with tufted ears watches me, amethyst eyes
unforgiving. They say the tang of glue lingers for
years. The vitrines stained by the prints of the man who last
yanked those necks into position. I have lost my
shoe, now limping in the warm dark lining the halls. A scarlet ibis,
frozen, clings to a plastic and paper tree. Fenced
by a landscape copied from National Geographic. All dirt is pretend.
Note: This poem’s title is taken from a line in Sylvia Plath’s “Blue Moles.”
undergrowth
the spirits fled from you and I
maybe treetops hid us and from us
pitiless matchbook trunks
turned away our faces masked
wildflower slippers cushioned
wounds where our feet grew roots
broken calloused soles
grisley veinous things pursued
watered down wine toasts
to union everlasting
transparency worn as gauzy costume
conform to reedy forest floor,
ear to cool soil
join me, my bride
and
come
Today in the pool
Today in the pool
a drowned mantis beautiful as Ophelia:
lapis lazuli wings curved open like a tutu,
yellow body shading to red, thin green arms raised.
The grey sky lent down to weep
transparent pearls on its waxy wings.
Just Out of Frame
a whistle through the thickening blaze
the far-far away of the owl in the blue night
dustbin crash, landing waves beyond,
close tones, on the edge of feverish,
joy rising; those limbs in the firelight
a node of clarity, just out of frame
a stone in the shoe-bowl
children’s voices in unison
the hungry kernel of a name
Transport
Yesterday in the falling leaves
an epiphany came that I thought was mine
but today I discovered it came to another
centuries ago as he watched the tide
what other wisdom comes and goes
reaches across the islands of time
sails to shore or waits in harbor
ready to take us somewhere else
Christine E. Hamm, queer & disabled English Professor, social worker, and student of ecopoetics, has a PhD in English, and lives in New Jersey. She recently won the Tenth Gate prize from Word Works for her manuscript, Gorilla. She has had work featured in North American Review, Nat Brut, Painted Bride Quarterly, and many others. She has published six chapbooks and several books, including Saints & Cannibals.
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Dane Lyn is a queer, educator, poet, and glitter enthusiast with an MFA from Lindenwood University. Find them in Southern California with their partner, advocating for disabled rights, constructing blanket forts, caring for their menagerie of teens, snakes, lizards, dogs, rabbits, and cats, and ridding their shoes of beach sand. Dane’s work has been or will be featured in Gnashing Teeth and Nymph. They’re on Twitter and Instagram at @punkhippypoet.
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Wendy Blaxland is an award-winning writer. She has published poetry in the United States, Australia, England, and Europe. She has written over 110 books, mainly for children, both fiction and non-fiction. She is also a playwright with over 25 plays produced. Wendy lives surrounded by bush near Sydney. Much of her poetry is inspired by the environment in which she lives, but she is a citizen of the world and is passionate about how poetry can vibrate the heartstrings of its people.
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Siobhan Tebbs is a queer poet based in Barcelona, originally from the North of England. Her work appears regularly in Barcelona-based publications Parentheses and Libro rojo, and she can often be found whispering poetry to clients at the Poetry Brothel as her character Sebastian. More at siobhantebbs.wordpress.com.
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Bradley Samore studies poetry and is a writing consultant for graduate students at California State University, Fresno. His writing has been featured in various publications including West Texas Literary Review and Cloudbank. Bradley won 1st Prize in Fresno State’s 2021 Art Song Festival Poetry Competition.
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Melancholia
i.
Hope is no thing with feathers –
It is a feral thing with four legs:
a squirrel or a fox or a rabbit.
It is my neighbor who I hear now
though the paper-thin wall,
turning on the water, coughing, closing a door.
I move as he does.
Sigh when he sighs,
Walk when he walks,
Sit when he sits.
I think,
so this is how a body moves
with ease in the world.
ii.
The palimpsest of my life
is erasing itself again
and me with it,
making space for a new
version of things.
To Know, in the Biblical Sense
I have forgotten how to pray.
When I get on my knees, my mouth
is otherwise occupied, wide, a serpent
speaking softly about those forbidden
things, fruits that make mouths wet
& worthy, about juices that drip down chins.
Eat and you will know, he says.
He runs a finger over my chapped lips & says,
This is my favorite part of you.
He says my name like we
are not strangers. So, then:
if not on my knees, how
can I commune with God? How
can I ask for
help?
The Womb Retires
Let me bronze it like a little shoe
to remember. My danger-cup,
red toy car, fruit salad—
from thimble to fist to loaf to
big hot stove, that was where
I did all my thinking.
Turning out its last pocket,
it hums a few sweet stray phrases.
Shall we throw a bon voyage
fête? What cruise to send it on?
No sea big enough, no boat
the right kind of small.
The Blood of Grapes
Abuse is an ugly word.
It rakes its claws across my flesh.
I see bones of former lives,
bleached white by the desert sun.
I see disembodied spirits,
wandering lost among the ruins,
in search of a physical substance that cannot be.
Never finding the salvation which we seek,
tucked beneath the bedsheets of a nightmare.
There is nothing more to see, beyond the red horizon.
Finding absolution in the
blood of grapes, shed for our desires.
Polkas
A rice-grain jitter is
drizzling around my ears
I am on a dry mesa
striped in reds and browns
under flashing rebozos that wring history
shimmer like maracas
And now a fertile chant weaves through the square
a stone school with children gathering syllables
They chant and it brings rain through lonesome gullies
fills their bright canteens
They pass anticipation through young lips
The vendors fold their booths
the drizzle
the reverent school chant
the polkas
starting again
Megan Rilkoff is a writer and a teacher of young writers living in Central Pennsylvania with her partner and cat, Cheddar. She has previously taught in New York City and Laos. Her work has been published in From Whispers to Roars, Passengers Journal, and Wild Roof Journal.
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Amanda Woodard is a freelance poet, essayist, and ghostwriter, as well as an MFA candidate at Antioch University. She studied Social Science and Journalism at the University of North Texas and attended writing workshops at the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference and Writing Workshops Dallas. Her work has been performed in Oral Fixation and published in Ten Spurs, eris & eros, Cathexis Northwest Press, and Button Eye Review.
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Nancy White is the author of three poetry collections: Sun, Moon, Salt (winner of the Washington Prize), Detour, and Ask Again Later. Her poems have appeared in Beloit Poetry Review, FIELD, New England Review, Ploughshares, Rhino, and many others. She serves as editor in chief at The Word Works in Washington, D. C. and teaches at SUNY Adirondack in upstate NY.
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Ann Christine Tabaka was nominated for the 2017 Pushcart Prize in Poetry. She was the winner of Spillwords Press 2020 Publication of the Year, and her bio was featured in Who’s Who of Emerging Writers 2020, published by Sweetycat Press. Chris has been internationally published and won poetry awards from numerous publications. Her work has been translated into Sequoyah-Cherokee Syllabics, into French, and into Spanish. She is the author of 13 poetry books, and she has been published micro-fiction anthologies and short story publications. Christine lives in Delaware with her husband and four cats. She loves gardening and cooking.
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Andy Oram is a writer and editor in the computer field. His editorial projects have ranged from a legal guide covering intellectual property to a graphic novel about teenage hackers. Print publications where his writings have appeared include The Economist, Journal of Information Technology & Politics, and Vanguardia Dossier. He has lived in the Boston, Massachusetts area for more than 30 years. He self-published a memoir, Backtraces: Three Decades of Computing, Communities, and Critiques, and his poems have been published in Ají, Arlington Literary Journal, Conclave, Genre: Urban Arts, Heron Clan, Offcourse, Panoply, Soul-Lit, and Speckled Trout Review. Website: praxagora.com
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