I am honored today to see my poem “This Windy Morning” published over at Spillwords Press. Thank you, Editor Dagmara K., for allowing me to share my voice there!
You can find the poem right here.
Tag Archives: This Windy Morning
“This Windy Morning” featured by The Piker Press
I’m very pleased to share here that my poem “This Windy Morning” was published today by The Piker Press. You can find it right here.
The Piker Press is an outstanding online journal of arts, sciences, fiction and non-fiction, and I remain grateful to Editor Sand Pilarski for allowing me to share my voice with its readers.
(And don’t you just love that artwork they selected?!)
Eric Robert Nolan to be featured by the Piker Press
I’m honored to share here today that the Piker Press will feature five submissions of my writing in the coming months.
Editor Sand Pilarski has informed me that my horror/science fiction story, “Shine Now, Fiercely, Forever,” will appear at the weekly online literary magazine on December 10th. This story was originally published in January 2017 by The Bees Are Dead.
Four poems of mine will also be featured between January and May of 2019: “Confession,” “This Windy Morning,” “Roanoke Summer Midnight” and “My Mother’s Apartment.” These poems appeared over the last several years in the pages of Peeking Cat Poetry Magazine.
The Piker Press is a journal for arts, sciences, fiction and non-fiction that its creators like to think of it as “the illegitimate, online child of Analog and National Geographic, but funnier.” It’s a great online periodical featuring fun and thought-provoking material from a range of voices. You can find it right here at http://www.pikerpress.com/.
It’s a windy, rainswept morning in Roanoke, Virginia.
So how about a poem about a windy, rainswept morning?
“This Windy Morning,” by Eric Robert Nolan
The gales cry,
their sounds rise,
so strangely like
the wailing of children.
The gales
have ripped a rift in purgatory.
Along the low hill’s haze
and indistinct palette of grays,
the thinning slate shapes
are either columns of rain,
or a quorum of waifish wraiths.
Condemned but inculpable
are those little figures —
long ago natives maybe — in an ironic,
insufficient sacrament:
this obscuring rain’s
parody of baptism.
If that faultless chorus
should never see heaven,
they will ever be wind without end
their lamentations ever
shrill within rare
arriving spring downpours.
Always will the squall
imprison their calls.
You and I should refrain
any temptation to breach
these palisades of rain —
lest we be greeted by each
iron-colored countenance:
the sorrowing slim nickel
of an infant’s visage,
little boys’ graying faces,
the silvering eyes of the girls.
© 2017 Eric Robert Nolan
Photo credit: By Rodrigo Paredes from Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina (Raindrops on the window) [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
Peeking Cat Poetry Magazine features “This Windy Morning”
The February 2018 Issue of Peeking Cat Poetry Magazine is out, and is available both for purchase and for free in PDF format. If you’d like to read my poem, “This Windy Morning,” you can find it on page 14.
Thank you once again to Editor Sam Rose for allowing me to share my work!
Publication Notice: Peeking Cat Poetry Magazine will feature “This Windy Morning”
I just received some very nice news — Peeking Cat Poetry Magazine in the United Kingdom will publish my ghost story poem, “This Windy Morning,” in its February 2018 issue. The issue will be released soon, and I believe that it again will be available in both softcover and PDF format.
“This Windy Morning” was first published by Poetry Pacific in November 2017. I’ll post links when it appears over at Peeking Cat.
I hope that you all are enjoying this sunny but blustery winter weekend.
Publication notice: Poetry Pacific features three poems by Eric Robert Nolan
I’m honored to share here that the Vancouver-based Poetry Pacific published three of my poems today in its biannual issue: “This Windy Morning,” “Redbud Leaves,” and “Delaware Sheets.” You can find all three at the link below.
“This Windy Morning” envisions a ghost story for my adopted city of Roanoke, Virginia. “Redbud Leaves” is a very short nature poem I wrote while I lived among the hills of Northern Virginia, and “Delaware Sheets” is a short love poem that wrote a few years back. This third piece was published previously by Every Day Poets, Dead Snakes and UFO Gigolo.
I’m quite grateful to Editor-In-Chief Yuan Changming for selecting my work for publication. The Autumn Issue features outstanding work from 73 poets and three visual artists.
http://poetrypacific.blogspot.com/2017/11/3-poems-by-eric-robert-nolan.html
Publication notice: Poetry Pacific to feature three of my poems.
I received some great news this afternoon — the editors at Poetry Pacific have kindly agreed to publish three of my poems in the e-zine’s next biannual issue.
The poems selected were “This Windy Morning,” which appeared Friday here at the blog; “Redbud Leaves,” which appeared last summer; and “Delaware Sheets,” which was published in 2013 by Every Day Poets. Poetry Pacific’s autumn issue will be released on November 5.
Poetry Pacific endeavors to publish and promote the best contemporary poetry in English it can find, and its emphasis is on shorter poetry. Its Editor-In-Chief is nine-time Pushcart-nominee Yuan Changming.
“This Windy Morning,” by Eric Robert Nolan
“This Windy Morning,“ by Eric Robert Nolan
The gales cry,
their sounds rise,
so strangely like
the wailing of children.
The gales
have ripped a rift in purgatory.
Along the low hill’s haze
and indistinct palette of grays,
the thinning slate shapes
are either columns of rain,
or a quorum of waifish wraiths.
Condemned but inculpable
are those little figures —
long ago natives maybe — in an ironic,
insufficient sacrament:
this obscuring rain’s
parody of baptism.
If that faultless chorus
should never see heaven,
they will ever be wind without end
their lamentations ever
shrill within rare
arriving spring downpours.
Always will the squall
imprison their calls.
You and I should refrain
any temptation to breach
these palisades of rain —
lest we be greeted by each
iron-colored countenance:
the sorrowing slim nickel
of an infant’s visage,
little boys’ graying faces,
the silvering eyes of the girls.
© 2017 Eric Robert Nolan
[Note: I began writing this yesterday morning, which was, at a sensory level, just like the fictional morning described. Southwest Virginia indeed has some unique weather, affected, as I’m told, by its sprawling mountain ranges. (They circle the Roanoke metro area.)
The rain yesterday was abrupt and shrieking. I posted on social media that I’d experienced “that eerie moment when the wind sounds strangely like the wailing of children.” So hence the poem that I finished (?) tonight. I think a lot of my friends will find it funny; they certainly were laughing at my poet’s melodrama yesterday. One said it was a nice turn of phrase, too — and that it could be the start of a story.
I’ve never written what I’ve considered a “horror poem” before. (“The Writer” in 2013 was never intended as such, anyway.) But the genre is alive and well, at least in the small presses. Horror poetry is frequently requested in the calls for submissions you can find on Facebook’s various “Open Calls” pages, anyway. (And if you’re an indie writer, those pages are great to peruse anyway.)
I hope you enjoyed the piece.]
Photo credit: By Huhu Uet (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 