The August 2023 issue of Down in Dirt Magazine just dropped (Volume #210), including my short poem, “Nothing.” The theme of this issue is “At the Zoo.”
You can purchase a copy of Volume #210 right here at Amazon.
Or, you can read the entire issue online for free. My piece can be found right here.
Thanks once again to Editor Janet Kuypers for permitting me to showcase my work in such an outstanding literary magazine!
A really nice alumna of mine supplied a few more pictures of the destruction of Alvey Hall, after I posted about it yesterday. (Thanks again, Shelby!)
As I mentioned then, the Mary Washington College dorm was actually torn down in 2021.
No, it wasn’t due to the infamy of me having once lived there. I have not yet fully scandalized a building.
This article is from two years ago — but I just saw this today when an alum shared it.
WOW, the memories I have of that place.
Alvey Hall Demolition at University of Mary Washington
I told the nice young woman who cut my hair that I went to school in Fredericksburg. She said she thought I might have gone to high school with her dad.
For some reason, that made me feel SO old.
Update — people on Facebook have now informed me that the phrase “nice young woman” is employed only by old people.
IT WAS THOSE GOD DAMN LEG LIFTS. FITNESS IS A LIE.
Fitness is a lie perpetrated upon us by the … Fitness-Industrial Complex.
I blame Republicans.
Fried mild Italian sausage, melted mozzarella, and spaghetti sauce, served on toast.
There is a superb op-ed piece in The Roanoke Star today that was written by my good friend and colleague, Russell Painter. You can find it right here.
Do check it out!
Draw your
slim white finger to your lips in your thoughtful
pause at the coffee shop.
Glide it unknowingly down
the slender pink bank of your lower lip
beneath the easy stream of your speech,
your lithe tongue a siren there,
pressing gently along your syllables,
and your enlivened words
her serene refrain.
Draw your
eyes to the bright light at the great window —
the iridescent blue of the sky you led me to,
Your irises reflecting
the heaven that is yet less than you.
Draw your
warm opal palm over the pages of your book, to show me,
though its words are only hieroglyphs —
illegible in my ardor,
Iberian beside you,
arcane runes under your perfume.
Draw your
fingertips to touch my knee
in gentle reassurance,
sensing my avidity.
These — all of these —
Song and lesser heaven, hieroglyph and touch of knee,
draw me
to you, now and ever, whether
present or in memory.
(c) Eric Robert Nolan 2023
Photo credit: By Takeaway – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26758175
I love this song. This was the ninth track from U2’s landmark 1991 album, “Achtung Baby.” I remember listening to this song while munching on Butterfingers candy bars, cramming nervously for psych exams in my dorm room during the 1993/94 school year at Mary Washington College.
By psych exams, I mean tests in my psychology classes — not tests administered to me by a psychiatric professional. But, hey, maybe they should have given me the latter. It might have saved everyone a lot of time.
How fortunate are
those garments, wrapped, as they are,
on your curvature.
Fashion (Mode), color lithograph by Otto Lendecke, 1912
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 