I got some more great news today — Illumen magazine released its Spring 2020 issue, featuring my poem “Smiling Among Inert Shipwrecks.” This edition of the magazine boasts a cover by artist Sandy DeLuca, and names Francis W. Alexander as its Featured Poet. You can order a copy from Hiraeth Books right here.
Thanks again to Illumen Editor in Chief Tyree Campbell for accepting my poem for this outstanding quarterly digest of speculative poetry.
I’m honored to share here that Down in the Dirt magazine published my poem “The Writer” today in its May 2020 issue. The issue is entitled Seasons, and you can order a copy of it over at Amazon right here. You can also read the entire magazine for free online right here.
Down in the Dirt is always a terrific venue for featuring fresh and interesting voices in indie lit. Once again, I am grateful to Editor Janet Kuypers for allowing me to see my work published there.
I barely remember this TV commercial for Milton Bradley’s “Stratego,” but I sure remember the game. (Thanks to Youtube user Lokke for posting it online.) When I was a kid, I used to think of it as “pre-chess” — the strategy game that kids played before they graduated to that paragon of all games — even for adults. (I was quite the chess enthusiast when I was in gradeschool, which is odd, because I wasn’t exceptionally good at it.)
My skill at Stratego was similarly undistinguished, I guess. I pretty consistently relied on the most obvious gambit … planting my “flag” piece in the corner and surrounding it by “bombs.” (To keep my opponent guessing, I’d sometimes pull a switcheroo and plant my “flag” in the other corner.)
My older brother had been playing Stratego for longer than I had; it was his board game, after all. So he regularly sent his “miners” and expendable pieces straight for my predictable strongholds to ultimately win the game. (Come to think of it, the kid next door got wise to my standard gameplay pretty early on as well.)
But I still loved it. Stratego was hella fun. (Yes, I am back on the “hella” train.) I remember being in my early 20’s and being delighted when it was mentioned on “The X-Files.” It was in the Season 2 episode “Colony,” in which Fox Mulder’s long lost sister returns. (Or does she?) The first thing the putative sibling does when she she spots her brother is joke about Stratego. That felt like a shout-out just for me.
Things are getting way too serious up in here lately. I’m trying to lighten the mood, so here’s a goofy short poem I wrote back in my NoVa days. (For those outside this fair Commonwealth, “NoVa” is slang for “Northern Virginia.”)
Hot Cop
protects the Pentagon.
She’s the Lovely Blue Line, people.
You sure can’t call it
“Homely Security.”
If glances were misdemeanors
I’d be a suspect.
I picture a lot of defense lawyers out there mulling over a “Donald Trump defense” for drug dealers.
If I recommend to you that you inject yourself with an illegal narcotic, can I exonerate myself afterward by claiming that I was only “being sarcastic?”
Anyway, the below meme information, if you haven’t seen it already, was put out by the makers of the makes of Lysol, following the president’s comments.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 