Tag Archives: Eric Robert Nolan

A misty Roanoke morning, November 2025

Don’t mess with Memphis?

It’s moments like this that the lady will say, “This is the Memphis in me,” or “The Memphis came out.”



Tell me these do not look like coffins.

I thought Dracula had arrived in Roanoke — which would be weird, because there’s no place for The Demeter to dock.

Either that or my lifelong descent into madness had finally yielded its first visual hallucinations.

Turns out these thick metal implements were left there by an excavating company.  They’re just smallish plow blades for pushing aside snow, seen from the rear.  (They are open on the other side.)



Abandon all hope, ye who enter here …

Hey, guys.  If my strange and archaically worded ravings amuse you, I’ve started a page here at the site for 2026 poetry.  You can find it right here:

Poetry, 2026



 

“Accident Allison,” by Eric Robert Nolan

Accident Allison, what the heck?!
Again you nearly broke your neck?!
Looking for your wayward cat,
did you trip and then fall flat?

Accident Allison, what the hell?!
Your puppy pulled and then you fell?
Did you bonk your pretty noodle
chasing after Ulley Poodle?

Accident Allison, Jeezum Crow!
Did you stub your middle toe?
Did it meet the metal rake
while you raced a garden snake?

Accident Allison, what’s the news?
Is your bottom slightly bruised?
Did you fall backwards on your tush
while charming frogs beneath a bush?

Accident Allison, Holy Smoke!!
Your back-left foot is nearly broke?!
Was your latest peccadillo
dancing with an armadillo?

You’ll never be a train conductor,
ballet coach or ski instructor.
Such dreams are best subordinated —
you’re too uncoordinated.

Your fortunes are deplorable
but charms are unignorable:
ingenious, wise and beautiful,
good-natured and adorable!



Illustration by artist Hugo von Hofsten from Dogs and Puppies, Barse & Hopkins, 1908.

Today’s portmanteau:

Snow + ordeal = Snowrdeal.



 

“A One-Sentence Note Following a Departure”

All rooms in which you are absent

are endlessly and sadly silent.



Photo credit:Berenice Zambrano from DF, Mexico, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

So here’s a cure for xenophobia.

All one needs to do is meet one of the immigrants who go COMPLETELY OUT OF THEIR WAY to be kind to me, even if they are working through a goddam freezing apocalyptic ice storm.

Being really decent and cool has nothing to do with where you were born.



 

I’ll take “batting out of his league” for a thousand, Alex.

I am Tyler Nolan.

The first rule of Slight Club is that you’re not invited.

See what I did there?