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.
July 2021
Batch 020: 07/09/21
Alison Jennings
Liberation Strategy
I have erred
in liberation strategy.
It is good to have
a force to push against.
Resistance
offers
final framing
to evanescent struggle.
Without a wall
to hold me back,
I dissipate,
lost in airy ether,
a formless
nothing: a lack
of space or shape,
existing neither
within time nor mind.
Claire Cortese
The Rivermen
Watch reality splinter
and fall to the floor in pieces.
The undercurrent is pink and raw.
The blood of misperception seeps
from the wound,
trickles down your neck
and pools in your collarbone
for the wolves to lap up.
You can hear their teeth chatter
at the tree line, in the bushes,
behind your ear.
Vertebrae –
the rivermen pop pieces of your spine into their mouths like candy.
You are two feet shorter now, hunched
and misaligned, wide gaps
in the center of you.
Panic flows like water from a faucet,
filling your lungs
until you drown on dry land.
Susan Cummins Miller
Wonderlust
Unmoored from shifting shore.
Lost dignity extracted from the bones
of union. A gulf beyond repair.
Wonderlust beckons: Leave behind
the flaming town, the plaintive note
of a Gambel’s quail calling his covey together.
air currents sculpt sand, roll gray flags of mists
tripping in on the longshore drift. Breath
to breath, biding time beside
the ache and cry of the tide, burst sprays disputing
the gaunt edge of a frowning shore. Shade lore
from Wisdom’s barricade unscrolls.
Jeni De La O
a transcription
Keith Pantalion
Pottery 101: A Novice
big wedge small wedge clay on the wheel –
single finger centered, pressed down,
pulled and spread, with wet hands
up the sides with slip to shape the hips below the jar mouth
twists and turns of a tricky pot create myths among the novice –
moisture inside the hollow cause explosions inside the Kiln
eager first timers work the pedal with inexperienced speed
and with loss of center, the whirlwind affair turns clay
into mucky mud, and after the fire, abandonment,
a single shard can be found lodged left of center.
Contributor Information
Alison Jennings is a Seattle-based poet who has been writing poetry off and on since her ninth year, but only began submitting her work after retiring from public school teaching. Recently, she has had over thirty poems published, and has won 3rd place in two contests, plus Honorable Mention in an international literary contest. Please visit her website at sites.google.com/view/airandfirepoet/home.
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Claire Cortese was born and raised in rural New Hampshire. During her undergraduate studies, she received the Richard M. Ford Writing Award for Nonfiction, and the Frederick Hyde Hibberd ’88 Scholarship Award for Poetry from the University of New Hampshire. She received her M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Durham in Durham, England, where she researched the correlation between dream studies and creative practices.
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Tucson writer Susan Cummins Miller, a former field geologist and college instructor, has published six novels and an anthology containing the works of 34 women writers of the American frontier. Her poems, short stories, and essays appear frequently in journals and anthologies, including the forthcoming Without a Doubt: Poems Illustrating Faith. Two poetry collections, Making Silent Stones Sing, a chapbook, and Deciphering the Desert: A Book of Poems, will be released by Finishing Line Press in 2022.
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Jeni De La O is an AfroCuban poet and storyteller living in Detroit. She is a co-founder of The Estuary Collective and Managing Editor of Kissing Dynamite Poetry. Her column, “Brown Study,” can be found at The Poetry Question. Catch up with her at www.croquetalessinthecity.com.
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Keith Pantalion is a retired public school teacher who currently teaches mathematics at an independent school in Dallas. He is a DIY coffee roaster and distance runner.
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June 2021
Batch 019: 06/11/21
Emily-Sue Sloane
Renewal
Tucked deep within the woods
at the foot of the mountain
a stream bed gathers extra heartbeats,
glistening jewels hidden
in the mud beneath rushing water
that sings hallelujahs
to April’s advancing warmth.
The weight shifts, mountain to stream.
Pulses come alive
clinging to cattail promises.
Daylight takes its sweet time.
Leaf-mottled sunshine warms
stepping stones,
a path left by the ancients,
inviting you across
to explore the other side
and if you so choose
return home.
Sharon Whitehill
Ambushed Asleep
I finished with you long ago,
frog-marched you into the past,
and still you refuse
to conform to the code
of a prisoner-of-war.
At night you break free,
unredeemed,
your cowardice garbed
in the bulletproof vest of a bully,
wielding the live hand grenades
of your insatiable need.
Your rage still primed to explode
wherever I lower my foot.
Humbled by fate and barbed wire,
you should be docile and silent,
not perpetrating these sneak attacks
under cover of dark
that set the whole forest on fire.
Claudia Greenwood
Colorado Gold Rush
Liquid,
precious metal
drizzles from mountain peaks.
Aspen gold pours
into canyons and valleys.
Tiny leaves, holding on
against the press of winter,
shimmer.
Anna Papadopoulos
Cappadocia, Turkey
Fairy chimneys born of ash,
and ancient limestone caves
of coral remains. A million years
in the making.
Eastern Orthodox churches have eroded
like my ancestors that once lived there.
How can I crave what isn’t mine?
A fossil on my soul,
a message of longing
travels through my blood:
a child’s bones
bearing the name of my son,
left there alone.
Richard (Eric) Johnson
Basilica
fresco baby Jesus
high in the dome
with grown man features
and a mocking smile
looking down his
blue gowned
marble mother
meditates in sanctuary
her head cocked sideways
lidless eyes stare
ornate golden stairway
climbing past high altar
towards some
unknown where
Contributor Information
Emily-Sue Sloane writes poetry to capture moments of wonder, worry, and human connection. Her poems “Something’s Not Right” and “April in Glen Cove Back When I was Young” won CAW Anthology poetry contest awards. Her work has appeared in journals and anthologies, including Amethyst Review, Bards Annual, Boston Literary Magazine, Corona (a Walt Whitman Birthplace anthology), Front Porch Review, Hope (a CAW Anthology), Never Forgotten: 100 Poets Remember 9/11, Shot Glass Journal, Suffolk County Poetry Review, and The Long Island Quarterly. She lives in Huntington Station, NY. Website: emilysuesloane.com
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Sharon Whitehill is a retired English professor from West Michigan now living in Port Charlotte, Florida. In addition to poems published in various literary magazines, her publications include two biographies, two memoirs, two poetry chapbooks, and a full collection of poems.
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Claudia Greenwood is Professor Emeritus of English from a Midwestern university. As she has cultivated the power of observation, and she has found the only suitable companion for it to be words. Scenes that some would photograph and others would paint become strings of letters, the white space in between to be filled with shared meaning—hers and that which the reader brings to the particular view point. She has published in Best New Poems: AZ Writers and self-published several chapbooks.
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Anna Papadopoulos has been a cashier, columnist, wedding photographer, candle maker, marketing professor, and corporate executive. She adores New York City’s gritty beaches and littered streets, and even though she knows the odds of winning the lotto are impossible, she believes that it will happen. She and her husband share their home in Staten Island, NY with their twin sons, daughter, a poodle, a Siberian cat, and her mother’s neglected Lenox collection.
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Richard “Eric” Johnson is a graduate of Indiana University and holds a B.A. in Germanic Languages and an M.S. in Education. Eric has four previously published volumes of poetry: Of Museums, Monsoons and Mausoleums (1998), Schemes of Consciousness (2003), Memoir Poetic of a Naked Cop (2013), and Watching Angels Dance By Candlelight (2019). Eric served in Viet Nam and West Berlin with the U.S. Army before beginning a career in law enforcement as a road patrol officer with the Marion County Sheriff’s Department in Indianapolis. After retiring, Eric traveled overseas with his wife who was likewise stationed in Germany with the U.S. Army. They now happily reside in Arlington, Virginia.
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