If you’re one of my alumni and you’re looking for a smile today, check out this this 1983 WaPo piece about campus life at Mary Washington College. It was written by Mary Battiata on the school’s 75th anniversary.
It sounds like even kids back then took a pretty dour attitude about how Mary Wash’s social life compared with that of other schools. And this was a full seven years before our graduating class even arrived as freshmen.
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As any of my fellow Roanokers can attest, viewing conditions for the 2024 solar eclipse were not ideal. My perseverance did pay off, however … the clouds unexpectedly parted around 3 PM, near the height of the phenomenon.
And it was pretty damned trippy to watch.
The Piker Press featured my short poem “Blue” today; you can find it right here at the link.
As always, thanks to Managing Editor Sand Pilarski for selecting my work! 🙂
Your face will occasion the spaces
wherever I delay – prosaic places:
the sofa, the hall, the breakfast table
when slow new sun ascends in palette
of light against dark, you are with me,
observing the glowing morning,
sipping and smiling over coffee.
You, My Love, are always near,
for you are ever in reverie here.
Your arrival surprises me
at market among the rows
of pears and bright strawberries,
crates of crimson radiance,
and the hard and fragrant weights of apples,
their round and reddening-ember
emblems of autumn in bins.
You offer to buy some for me.
The curve of your hand falls over one
like white plumeria petal.
Unpredicted you appear,
For you are ever in reverie here.
When I pause at the park’s entrance,
piqued by inscrutable sculpture there,
you are on my arm again,
curious also at its
strange silver spades and towering contour,
the upward angled language of it,
its high iron hieroglyph.
You draw me close and joke
of Freud in girlish murmurs, your
quickened persistence of whimsy.
Your drollery will still adhere
For you are ever in reverie here.
Ever lovely, ever dear,
are ruminations I revere;
senses of you persevere,
for you are ever in reverie here.
© Eric Robert Nolan 2024
Photo credit: Ashley Campbell, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Infused in crumbling crust
is delectable violent violet –
a pounded plum,
a welt of fruit.
Oh, if my lips could peruse
that square and powdered sugar-bruise.
(c) Eric Robert Nolan 2024
Photo credit: Takeaway, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Food, a nice place to live in a city that I love, a wonderful girl and loads of good friends. A good portion of the world is not so lucky.
Perspective is a good thing.
Eschewing the Oxford comma — that’s something else I’m thankful for.
Your absence ever leaves me sour,
annual absconded hour —
that vexing day when March exhibits
sixty fewer sleeping minutes.
Subtract an hour of labor, please!
But leave to me my precious Z’s!
— Eric Robert Nolan
I am currently enjoying The Galway Review’s annual anthology, The Galway Review 12 — which includes my poem, “The Beach House, Early Spring.” (The piece was published online by the magazine in October 2023.)
This really is one of the nicest honors I’ve received as a poet. The Galway Review is the city’s leading literary magazine, with more than a half a million readers worldwide, and I was included along with just seven other poets to see my work appear in this annual publication. I remain quite grateful to the magazine’s editors for selecting my poem.
If you’d like to peruse the anthology, you can read it online for free right here.
I’m honored to share here that three poems of mine have been selected for publication by Lothlorien Poetry Journal: “school shooter,” “The Windy Morning” and “The Rough, Violet Stone.”
Thanks once again to Editor Strider Marcus Jones for allowing me to see my work showcased by this excellent literary magazine!
This was taken at North Carolina’s Outer Banks in 1994. Pictured at right is the indomitable, inimitable, irreplaceable Dave Kline, of Mary Washington College fame. (Yes, his fashion sense was legendary.)
Who is the goofy guy at left? I have no idea.
Anyway, what a trip that was. I’m sure I’m not the only one of my dormmates who remembers it fondly.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 