Eric Robert Nolan’s writing has appeared throughout over 50 publications in 10 countries: the United States, Canada, Britain, Ireland, Germany, Romania, Turkey, India, Singapore and Australia.  His work was also selected for 14 anthologies, two chapbooks and six mini-books.  He was nominated for the Sundress Publications 2018 Best of the Net Anthology, and for Spillwords Press Awards in 2020, 2021 and 2022.  His debut novel was The Dogs Don’t Bark in Brooklyn Any More, published in 2013 by Dagda Publishing in the United Kingdom.  He is a past editor for the dystopian literature journal, The Bees Are Dead.  He was entered in 2022 into the national Poets & Writers Directory.

“At the Coffee Shop”

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.


[This poem was first published by Spillwords Press on August 26, 2023]

“Autumn Girl”

You 
are
fully
a quarter of all seasons, and time, for all of every autumn gathers up in you.

Your fair face
is made from clear Septembers.
Your eyes are every October.
Novembers are your crown —
leaves ignite there — in the darkening autumn brushfire of your hair.

Let
Time
keep
weighted winter; diffident spring; sudoric summer.

Rather, fall across me,
rouse me to sensation,
stir me and touch me
as a cooling wind with scent of smoke.

[This poem was first published by The Piker Press on September 4, 2023]

“A Poet’s Short Note to His Muse”

My voice, my words, with you, O love,
are storms on every day of every season,
and without
are an urchin’s fleeting whisper in the dark.