“Octopus, Octopi,” by Eric Robert Nolan
Octopus, octopi
Your faux grammar is a lie.
Forget that shit you heard;
“Octopi” is not a word.
Here is what the truth is:
The plural’s “octopuses!”
(c) 2016 Eric Robert Nolan
This is dedicated to my pal, Carrie. She detests pulpo as a dish, but I know she appreciates decent grammar.
“she,” by Eric Robert Nolan
in iridescent lavender
she
sidles up to me in dreams of burning purple.
her
slimming violet shoulders wilt like lilacs in her sighs.
her
gazing eyes are amethyst in torment.
she
whispers from her pomegranate lips that I am fiction.
Just a reminder … The Bees Are Dead is interested in your darkest visions about terrible future worlds!
Below is our transatlantic webzine’s inaugural call for submissions. Send us your dystopian or post-apocalyptic poetry, prose, art or photography.
I got some more nice news today — Haikuniverse featured my micro-poem, “Our Drive Home.” Haikuniverse is a project of the Poetry Super Highway, and daily publishes either a haiku or a micro-poem. (Readers can sign up for an e-mail from Haikuniverse each day.)
Thanks so much to Editor Rick Lupert for allowing me to share my very brief poem.
You can find it below:
I’m honored to report here today that another of my poems was featured by Dead Snakes.
Click here to read “Smiling Among Inert Shipwrecks.”
Once again, thank you to Editor Stephen Jarrell Williams!
I was surprised a couple of weeks ago when some friends of mine remembered “Highlights;” does anyone remember “Cricket?”
This is still being published. (I thought it was a 70’s thing, since I haven’t seen or heard of it since I was a young boy.) It’s a literary magazine aimed at older children — I had a couple of copies flapping around my bookcase or closet for years.
There was one issue that had an illustration of a young girl riding her bicycle on a pier, and there was a shark in the water swimming along below her. That drawing both scared me and piqued my interest in … 1978 or 1979 or so. I couldn’t read it — the story was just beyond my reading level. This is an incredibly obscure online query, but if anyone knows the title of that story, let me know. It would really tickle my nostalgia.
“Smiling Among Inert Shipwrecks”
by Eric Robert Nolan
[For Robert and Kathleen Nolan]
Oh, to extinguish the seas,
and make the waves recede.
The nights between you both and me
are oceans that separate.
To meet at a nadir
between continents,
to traverse
dryness in endless leagues,
to descend
the fathoms now made shining canyons,
where all the former depths are rendered
newly whitening plains,
I would find you
smiling among inert shipwrecks.
All their rusting hulls would be
as iron strange oases,
now in an ironic desert —
the seabed under midday.
A warm new noon alights their wakes.
Intermittent citadels
of masts again in sun
would brightly tower over
their resurrected figureheads;
their mermaids’ opaque eyes would find
we three gladdened
among the once benighted bows.
There’d be an incongruity
between crustaceans now
slowed almost to stillness
in the blanching sun, while we …
we rushed to an embrace.
Our shouts would break
the silence of epochs.
Somewhere on a shore, this night,
beached upon an altar
of lunar-like nocturnal sands,
finally, face to face,
dessicated starfish
stare at their namesakes in heaven.
(c) Eric Robert Nolan 2016
Calling all storytellers, poets, photographers and artists who harbor dark visions of the future in their hearts — submit your work to “The Bees Are Dead!” B.A.D. is an entirely new transatlantic webzine devoted to dystopian, futuristic and post-apocalyptic literature, and it released its first official Call for Submissions today:
The Bees Are Dead – Call for Submissions
I am honored to share here that I’ve been invited to partner in B.A.D.’s development with two friends and distinguished colleagues of mine. The first is Philippe Atherton-Blenkiron, and the second is Dennis Williamson. (If you’re familiar with my blog, then you’re well aware that I have long admired both men’s work.) As a third of “The Triumvirate,” I’ll be privileged to read and view your own interpretations of terrible days ahead.
So, please, visit the site, peruse our guidelines, and consider whether you might want to share any glimpses of the doomed worlds of your own creation.
Do it now … while there is still time.
The lower-budget “Cell” (2016) wasn’t quite the spectacular horror movie that I was hoping for. (A Stephen King zombie film?!) But it was still pretty good — I’d give it an 8 out of 10.
The screenwriting and directing are average. The acting seems uneven too. And, yes, that includes its curiously low-key performances by John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson. But the opening action set piece was well done, and it succeeds in capturing the creepiness and originality of King’s 2006 novel. What a neat genre-buster too — this is zombie movie meets sci-fi film meets supernatural horror epic meets art-house road movie. It really is an interesting (and quite divergent) variation of the zombie subgenre.
I’ll go ahead and answer the million dollar question for those who have read the book. Yes, that widely unpopular ambiguous ending has been changed, and what we are shown is far more conclusive and satisfying.
By the way, this isn’t King’s first venture into zombie horror. He wrote an excellent short story entitled “Home Delivery,” which I cheerfully recommend. It’s far closer to mainstream zombie horror, and I think it would appeal to “The Walking Dead” fans. I first read it in a worn copy of 1989’s “Book of the Dead” zombie anthology; it also appears in 1993’s “Nightmares & Dreamscapes.”
If you peek too long at the cat, the cat also peeks at you.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 